


Wedding Bell Blues

by semaphore27



Series: Götterdämmerung 24/7 [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), XMen - All Media Types
Genre: Angry Bruce Banner, Angst and Feels, Asgardian Law, Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Classical Music, Domestic Avengers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evil Plans, F/F, F/M, Gen, Good Loki, Heavy Angst, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Intersex Loki, Loki Feels, Loki's Kids, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Modern Royalty, Musical Instruments, Odin's A+ Parenting, Parent Loki, Parent Tony Stark, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Protective Thor, Stark Industries, Thor Is a Good Bro, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Triggers, Vomiting, Wedding Night, Wedding Planning, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:10:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: Tony and Loki have staggered home from Britain still licking their emotional and physical wounds. All they'd really like to do is relax and be together as a family with their kids, but instead Loki has to start his new job, the Stark Industries Board of Directors are insisting on their Howard-mandated right to approve Tony's spouse, the Avengers are (if you ask Tony) acting like a bunch of spoiled brats (and so is J.A.R.V.I.S.), and on top of that the alterations to Tony's tuxedo aren't done and the caterer just quit. Can things ever run smoothly for a genius inventor and a god of mischief?Follows within about four days of Long Ago, and in Another Country.Sensitive reader warning: Tony and Loki, especially in the first part of this installment, are still dealing with the abuse in their pasts, sadness over their loss in the previous story, physical illness and bigotry in the world around them. If you think that's something you can handle, I'm delighted, and I cordially invite you to read on. If you just want the part with the wedding, read the last two chapters and nothing else.





	1. There Is No "I" in Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve holds a team-building meeting. Tony visits Loki at his new job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor is cooking Martha Stewart's "Mushroom and Scallion Frittata," which actually is quite yummy.
> 
> A worm farm is usually a large box with several drawers, each lined with coconut coir or newspaper. Big, juicy earthworms live in the drawers, eating your fruit and veggie scraps and pooping out "casts" which are very, very good for plants.
> 
> " _I Want to Break Free_ " is a song by Queen, written by John Deacon. In the video, Freddie Mercury, dressed in drag, vacuums while rocking a pink sweater and heavy mustache. Because some people are idiots, the video was banned by MTV. And here we are, thirty years later...
> 
> bow and scrape=to show respect in an excessive way "Bow" refers to bending at the waist to show deference. "Scrape" references the kind of fancy, old fashioned bow in which the person bowing moves one foot behind him, almost as if getting ready to kneel.
> 
> feckless=lacking character and/or initiative, irresponsible, untrustworthy
> 
> The _Stepford Wives_ is a 1975 movie based on a 1972 Ira Levin novel. The plot involves a group of successful men who want glamorous, docile and obedient wives instead of real women who think, feel and have imperfections. To achieve this, they replace their actual wives with robots who look just like them.

* * *

“Oh, hell, I _am_ going to talk, even if it is in front of Thor.” Natasha twisted in her seat, yelling into the kitchen, “Thor, I may possibly be bad-mouthing your brother in front of you!”

“My love for my brother is without bounds,” Thor answered cheerfully, rapid-fire chopping handfuls of little brown mushrooms without even looking. Steve was glad he possessed quick-healing abilities, as he truly feared for the Asgardian’s fingers, but Thor didn’t appear to cut himself. Steve had never seen him cut himself.

Thor’s turn to cook for their weekly team-building breakfast meeting had come around and, like everyone else, Steve had been looking forward to tasting what he made for them—until he found out Thor had decided to make something called a frittata. Steve had no idea what a frittata might be.

It sounded… frilly, and foods he’d never heard of tended to make Steve nervous. He would eat Thor’s frittata, because to do so was good manners and food wasn’t for wasting, even in this abundant new world.

But it still sounded frilly.

“My most-clever brother begins his new work today,” Thor said with obvious pride, starting in on a handful of green onions. Both the mushrooms and onions went into a large frying-pan, which Thor then capped with a domed lid. He tidied his scraps away into a bamboo compost bucket.

He’d spoken at length a couple weeks back about the small garden he planned to start on the penthouse terrace with his brother and the children: tomatoes, lettuces, herbs and a few other things. The scraps went to feed the worms in his worm farm.

Thor also appeared to be very proud of his worm farm.

Clint snorted. “At where? The Ministry of Evil?”

“I know well there is no such place,” the Asgardian responded, still with perfectly good temper. Though a brutal fighter, Thor was at all other times a very pleasant fellow, good-natured and kind. Steve always enjoyed watching him play around and about the tower with his niece and nephews, who though slightly odd-looking, were charming and nicely-behaved children. They definitely seemed to have improved Tony for the better, as he acted quite lovingly toward them and even modified his generally appalling language in their presence.

Thor began to whisk eggs in a metal bowl. “Though I know well that you tease me, I shall reveal that Loki’s new work is at NYU, where he holds now a full professorship in the Department of Linguistics. Yesterday we set up his office to our great satisfaction. There is room for many of the books my brother has been concealing from Tony, so that he would not become filled with terror upon beholding the numerousness of the volumes.”

Bruce actually laughed at that one. He’d surely commiserated more than once with his best friend about Loki’s apparent book addiction.

“Today,” Thor continued, “My brother will teach the undergraduate students of Spring Quarter in both Phonological and Grammatical Analysis, and the graduate students in Syntactic Theory and Analysis. Although Loki attempted to explain to me what these names denote, I am no scholar, and remain perplexed by their actual meaning.”

He poured the eggs over the vegetables in his frying pan, stirring them gently with a wooden spoon. “I worry also, somewhat, because my Loki is still quite unwell, and would not eat a good breakfast in preparation for his day, but only drank tea with the children while they ate. Tea, I consider, is not sufficient sustenance for a day of work.”

“Geez, what’s wrong with him this time?” Bruce asked.

“Whilst In the country of the Britons, my most-beloved brother…” Thor began.

“Measles.” Tony slid into a chair, dropped the suit glove he was carrying onto the tabletop and began to poke at it rather aggressively with a probe, causing sparks and a variety of loud sizzling sounds. “He caught measles. Poor baby has zero resistance to anything and he was sick as a dog from our second day overseas. And yet there was archaeology. Underground. In a big, cold, wet cave in Wales. And a blizzard. And we were snowed in, in Winnebagos. Have you ever been snowed in, in a Winnebago? It is not cozy, lady and germs. I must have drunk eighteen gallons of frickin’ tea in my futile attempts to keep warm, because there was no frickin’ coffee to be had.”

“Soon-to-be brother-in-law.” Thor left his frittata alone to cook and began to pile small triangular scones into a napkin-lined basket. He brought the basket to the table, along with a ceramic crock of butter. Natasha and Clint immediately fell upon the scones as if they hadn’t eaten in months.

“Tony, did you not wish to share…?”

“No!” Tony turned on the blond giant with astounding fury. “No, I do not wish to fucking share, because they not only don’t fucking love Loki like we do, they actually hate him, and not only won’t they fucking care, I’m not going to give them their moment of sweet, sweet  
_Schadenfreude_.”

Tony had literally started shaking with anger, but Thor only looked thoughtful as he sprinkled what appeared to be grated parmesan over the mixture of eggs and vegetables. “I know not this word _Schadenfreude_ ,” he said.

“It means taking pleasure in another’s pain, Thor,” Bruce told him, at least having the grace to look slightly uncomfortable, even as he buttered a scone. His clear hatred for Loki now and then made Steve uncomfortable.  It just seemed so... un-Brucelike.

“Oh.” Thor considered. “Oh. Yes, dear Tony, you are correct. That they would almost certainly do.” Slowly, still thoughtful, Thor removed his apron. “And now, my Shield-Brothers and Sister that you are, I believe I want not to cook breakfast for you at this moment.”

In four strides he was out on the terrace, the door sliding shut behind him.

Natasha moved into the kitchen to take over the frittata, sliding the pan into the oven. “For your info, guys, I’m not taking over the cooking because I’m a woman, I’m taking over because I'm hungry and I know how to cook a frittata. Don’t get used to it.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Clint responded, gobbling down a scone in three bites. “Hey, is Thor actually crying out there?”

Tony abandoned his glove and stomped outdoors. This time the door slid shut so fast it rebounded off its jamb.

Steve left his seat to shut it gently, watching the two men outside for a moment before he sat down again. Tony had a hand on Thor’s back and appeared to be talking to him earnestly, while Thor sobbed on.

“Something happened over there.” Natasha retrieved a platter of sliced fruit from the icebox. “Those round green slices with the black seeds are kiwis, Steve. I know they’re a weird color, but they taste a lot like strawberries.”

Steve tried one. The texture was different, slightly crunchy with the small seeds, but the kiwi did taste something like a strawberry. He’d need to remember to note his impressions of the previously-unknown fruit, and of the frittata, in his journal. He tried to keep track of all the new things.

“Something,” Natasha continued, “Beyond measles, snowstorms and archaeology.”

Everyone looked at Bruce.

“Don’t ask me. I’m _so_ not in the loop for god-of-mischief-related news.”

Natasha rose to pull the frittata out of the oven, making what struck Steve as a distinctly Russian noise as she went, one that seemed to combine total disbelief, the death of all illusions, and contempt for human nature as it existed. She was a smart woman, fearless and poised—often, in many ways she reminded him of his fiery young Peggy.

“Oh, because of you being a total asshole, in general, towards Loki?” Clint said, following his oft-times partner and best friend to the kitchen. He handled the four plates Natasha dished up with the skill of a professional waiter, dealing them out to their places one by one.

After a few minutes. Thor and Tony returned, serving themselves, then joining the others at the table. Tony pushed his glove aside and sat hunched over his food, now and then poking it with his fork as if trying to determine whether or not it was alive, and likely to attack him.

Thor ate his huge portion of frittata slowly, in melancholy silence, now and then wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“We didn’t mean to upset you, Thor,” Steve said, as gently as he could. It was supposed to be a team-building meeting, after all. “I’m very sorry that your brother had a difficult time in Britain, and I hope he feels better soon. I’m sure we all do.”

Thor muttered something, at length, in his native tongue, then loaded a huge forkful of frittata into his mouth, as if to forcibly stop himself from speaking further.

Steve ate. The eggs were fluffy, the little brown mushrooms juicy, tender and delicious. He ought to have trusted Thor, really.

“So, Tony,” Natasha said, clearly trying to lighten the iffy mood. “A week to go, right, before your playboy days are over for good? How does that feel? Pep and I bought our outfits the other day. Let me tell you, we’ll be looking decoratively delicious, to say the very least.”

“Spiffy,” Tony spat, picked up his glove, and left.

“Well, that’s not a happy pre-wedding camper,” Clint said.

“Fear not that it is you, teammates.” Thor seemed to have recovered at least some of his equilibrium. “Tony feels great fury against his Board That Directs All at this time. Tony is frightened that Loki will be found unworthy in the eyes of the Midgardians, despite his many fine accomplishments, and that he and Loki will not be allowed to wed. Loki fears, most especially, being mocked because he is _ergi,_ as he was so often mocked in our former home, and is greatly shamed that he shall be forced to speak of the fathering, by violence, of my most-loved niece and nephews by our cruel brother Baldr, and also that he shall be forced to reveal his physical self unto strangers.”

That made them all sit in slightly squirmy silence, except maybe Bruce, who said, “Hey, maybe I could slip the board a special note requesting that they ask Loki about the horse story? I'm very curious about the horse story.”

“To do so, Dr. Bruce Banner,” Thor said quietly (for Thor) but in deadly seriousness, “Would be to raze all friendship and Shield-Brotherhood between we two, and to make yourself ever after my sworn enemy.” Thor suddenly looked about two seconds away from summoning Mjolnir and going to town on Bruce's head with it.

“By the way, Bruce,” Natasha said, her tone bone-dry, “I believe Thor meant raze with a z, as in ‘burn to the ground,’ rather than the other one.”

“In case you weren’t clear,” Clint chimed in, and pulled out one of his hearing-aids to adjust the volume. They were the price of Clint continuing as an Avenger, but he hated the things. Steve had felt fairly awful about pressing the point, but he'd have felt worse, he supposed, if someone got hurt because Clint hadn't caught a command or a warning because he simply couldn't hear it.

Steve put out his hands. “Guys, guys, all friends here, right? Bruce, Loki is Thor’s family. Let’s try to keep things civilized.”

“Know you,” Thor said, with a kind of restrained simmering fury, “Odin Allfather used us often. Used us to make godlike children upon the daughters of kings of all species whom he wished to control for his own ends, used also my strength or Loki’s guile and Craft to gain for himself what he would. The getting of Sleipnir was one such instance of use, where my once-father never intended to pay what he promised to pay and sent my poor Loki to break the solemnly agreed-upon contract by his talent and wit. Know you, also, that Svaðilfari never was a stallion, that the stallion and the _Byggir-án-Heitis_ , the Builder-Without-a-Name, were but one and the same, a brute of a steed and a brute of a man, a shapeshifter as Loki is a shapeshifter. When he realized he had forfeited his payment he took my brother in spite and malice, for his great beauty, and also to shame and defile the son of his enemy. Sleipnir too is a shapeshifter, as are all my brother’s children, unjustly forced to wear always the form he wears, which is not his own, allowed to act only as Odin wills him to act, ever the Allfather’s unwilling thrall. Sleipnir is a boy of great kindness, tender in his nature, and we pray to the _Nornir_ daily that he may somehow be released."

Thor leaned forward, pinning Bruce with his cold blue gaze. "Tell me, Dr. Bruce Banner, is this story truly of great amusement to you? Do you laugh heartily at all tales of rape or enslavement, or is it only my poor brother’s pain that amuses you? Should we laugh with spirit, also, at the cruelties of your despicable, murderous father, whom you put on your other form to murder in turn, and then reveal those close-held truths before rooms of cold-hearted strangers?”

Thor, clearly so far beyond furious he could no longer trust himself, raised his hand. Mjolnir smacked into his palm and he was out through the sliding glass door—unfortunately without opening it first—and zooming through the sky almost too fast to be visible.

Natasha and Clint were already hustling a jade-eyed Bruce into the elevator.

“J.A.R.V.I.S., the Hulk Tank pronto, please!” Steve sighed.

Fortunately they made it before Bruce changed altogether, locking him securely in the tank before the last of of his gentler self left him. The Hulk, knowing himself trapped, roared and raged and tore things even Tony had sworn weren’t tearable off the walls.

“ _I've got to break free_ ,” Clint began to sing, in a slight exaggeration of his own surprisingly tuneful voice. "' _God knows, God knows I want to break free…'"_

Steve knew he must be singing some well-known popular song, but it meant nothing to him.

“Clint, stop,” Natasha sighed. “Don’t be an ass.”

“Everything needs a soundtrack, Nat.” The archer turned his back on the tank, doing an odd little dance that seemed to mime the vacuuming of a carpet. “For example, Loki himself provides the midnight serenade to the night security dudes in the lobby. I’ve heard it with my own somewhat defective ears.”

Steve and Natasha stared at him.

“What? You can always tell when Loki’s super-upset about something because he sneaks out of the penthouse to play the grand piano in the lobby. The more upset he is, the longer he plays. The night guy told me he’s been getting all-night concerts. Good thing he likes Classical. I told him he should see if Loki takes requests. ‘Piano Man,’ maybe?”

“I’ve heard that song!” Steve exclaimed suddenly. He felt ridiculously proud of himself. “It was on the television.”

“There’s a lot to absorb,” said Natasha, who always seemed completely at home wherever she went, whatever she did. “It won’t always seem so strange, Steve. I’ve been there. I know.”

That was what Natasha always said, doubtless meaning the words kindly. They never helped, not even a little.

Clint flipped the switches that turned on Tony’s sound-muting device and the three of them watched Hulk rage on in the thick, artificial silence, the lack of noise somehow making his fury even more frightening.

* * *

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Tony said softly, brushing a lock of Loki’s hair that had somehow managed to escape his rather severe first-day-of-work braid back from his eyes. He looked excessively cute, curled up on his vintage leather professor-couch in his perfectly-tailored professor-suit (the jacket hung up on a hanger to keep it neat while he napped, of course).

“It’s the book burglar. I’ve come to steal your many, many books. Correction. Make that many, many, many, many, books. Jesus, Lok.” Tony laughed. "I should just buy you your own bookstore and be done with it."

“You lie, intruder.” Loki cracked an eye. “For I detect you are in truth my most-loved Tony. How have you come here? My door was locked, in what manner did you enter?”

“Um, let’s see… Answer to question one, by car. Answer to question two, giant Viking professor dude let me in. Nelson, I think he said? Or maybe Lars. Something like that. I just remember there being a lot of Larses and Nelsons in there somewhere. After his friendly slap on the back I think I suffered the adult equivalent of Shaken Baby Syndrome and can’t remember much." Tony watched carefully, but his mention of the word "baby" hadn't seemed to set off either fireworks or waterworks, so maybe Loki actually was inching his way toward okayness. "Dude seems unnecessarily huge to me. He makes Thor look like a hobbit.”

“You speak of Professor Nels Lars Nelson, of the Department of Scandinavian Studies. He has been very kind to me, and shown me many things.”

Loki struggled to sit up, but Tony pressed him down again. “Relax, babe. Just lie there and rest. I brought you a little something, just apple juice and chicken broth, nothing to get stressed about. I won’t make you eat it if your tummy’s too unhappy, but if you were able to manage a little it would probably be good for you. You want to be your shiny Loki self for your grad students this P.M.”

“I love you, Tony.” Loki’s long narrow hand wrapped around Tony’s short, broad one. “I love you beyond loving.”

“Likewise,” Tony said, leaning to kiss his fiancé’s temple.

“Oh, hey," he went on, "Giant blow up at the team meeting this morning, your bro versus my ScienceBro. I’d already bailed, but I understand Thor nearly Mjolnirated Bruce, and Bruce Hulked out and is still locked in the tank.”

“That is a great sorrow to me,” Loki said drowsily, “For Bruce is your Shield-Brother and dearest friend. Thor should not defend me at such meetings, but let the hard words flow over him as waters over the stones in the bed of a stream.”

“He loves you babe,” Tony reminded him. “He can’t help himself.”

“Then he should not love me so. He should not,” Loki said.

“Babe, would you do me a favor?” Tony asked.

“Anything, _hjarta minn_.” Loki’s green eyes shone at him brightly. “Anything.”

“It’s nothing big. I mean, for me it’s big, but for sure say no if it’s uncomfortable. Can I just slide up under you here—I promise, for once, I’ll hold perfectly, perfectly still—would it bother you too much if I held you as you slept?” Tony actually wished he could wrap his whole self around his love, just to always, always keep him safe and near.

“Tony, they will not take me from you. I shall not allow it.” Loki lifted up and Tony slid in where his head and shoulders had been. Loki’s head rested now on his shoulder and Tony circled Loki's too-thin body firmly, but not tightly, with his arms.

“I know, babe. I know.”

Tony did know, in his smart, tough, rational mind. Unfortunately, right below that mind lived the mind of the boy raised by Howard Stark, that neglected, shunned, uncertain boy who’d had drilled into him from birth that Stark Industries was everything, that he had to always bow and scrape to the board, that he must excel and at the same time conform, that boy who’d been told over and over (when he was noticed at all) that he was puny, insolent, stupid, feckless (he hadn’t even fucking known what feckless meant, still didn’t), awkward, weird, insubordinate, a fucking little word-he-wouldn’t-repeat.

A disappointment.

A disgrace.

Howard had even said, staggering drunk and in front of Maria, Tony’s mom, no less, that “Bitch, you must have made a fucking cuckold out of me, because no way can that idiot runt be my son.”

That idiot runt. To this day, at his worst moments, that's all Tony could see when he looked at himself. Always the smartest in the room, but never smart enough. Tough enough to take down bad guys of all sizes and shapes, but never tough enough.

Tony marked that night as the dividing point, between the life that had been (shitty enough, but at least a life in which his mom, though occasionally goofy, had always been sweet to him and present in spirit as well as body), and the life that came after, the life in which Howard still ranted and raged, or else ignored him, but his mom had turned into a beautiful but vacant-eyed zombie, as if his brilliant father had created his very own Stepford Wife, and only let the real Maria out for a few moments at a time, on Christmas or Tony’s birthday.

Even now, in his late forties, he looked forward to those days to a foolish extent, like a crazy, overexcited kid. He'd made a lot of his major life-mistakes on those particular days.

And his mom had been gone how many years?

Loki had shifted above him, until he no longer lay across Tony’s lap, being held by Tony, but held Tony instead, stroking his hair, rubbing the back of his neck.

" _Hjarta minn_ , my love, my love," he murmured, "All will be well, dearest one, all will be well. Fear not that I shall disappoint you. Already, I have begun to prepare the papers, and my cousins will send over most-brilliant testimonials as to how upstanding and fabulous a person I am. Even Dr. Hank McCoy has compiled an extremely detailed and highly confusing scientific document in answer to the question of my fecundity—which while I know it is a real word sounds, in my ear, like some extraordinarily fleshy species of mushroom.”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh. “Fuck, Lok, you’re so good to me. You’re so good.”

“We are both weary,” Loki told him gently, “And we are sad. But you have my strength to be your strength, and I have yours to be mine, and we will limp along together as best we may, until we both are healed.”

Tony pressed his face against Loki’s crisp green shirt, breathing his ice-cedar-clove scent, feeling the strength of his thin-but-powerful arms. “

You are my god,” he said. “You are my one dear god, ever and always. Loki, do you know how I worship you?


	2. Yes, Anastasia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day (or so) in the life of Phil Coulson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> F.U.B.A.R.=Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. A common military term, or so I'm told.
> 
> As well as being a game, Hogan's Alley is used for FBI training. It's never a good idea to shoot the harmless civilians. 
> 
> Mr. McCann the Irish butcher who died face down in hamburger is actually based on true events
> 
> Clearly I'm tap-dancing on Phil Coulson canon here, but I rather like the thought that if Loki is the god of lies, then Phil falls under his jurisdiction. And, oh the temptations of looking pleasant and ordinary! You can get away with absolutely anything, but the question is, how far do you take it?
> 
> Wisconsin is known for cheese, therefore its citizens (and fans of its football team, the Green Bay Packers) are often known as "cheeseheads." Far from being offended, they have been known to wear hats shaped like wedges of cheese. Yes, really.
> 
> Mr. Bigglesworth is Dr. Evil's hairless cat from the _Austin Powers_ movies.

* * *

_One of these days_ , Phil Coulson considered, watching the first class of new recruits in nearly three years run through the agency’s super-sized Hogan’s Alley, _We should just  damn well change our name from S.H.I.E.L.D. to F.U.B.A.R. and call it a day._

Phil had modeled Coulson’s Alley on his old Brooklyn stomping grounds, where he’d grown up half-indoors, half-running (in a mischievous but fairly innocent way) in the streets with the neighborhood gang.

In those days "gang" hadn’t meant, guns, drugs, tats, tagging or colors, it simply meant a group of boys (often with an additional tomboy or two thrown in, or somebody’s kid sister who he was supposed to be watching for the day). It was like Spanky, Alfalfa and their friends: Our Gang.

Coulson’s Alley had all the people and things he’d grown up with, from Mr. McCann the Irish butcher who’d unexpectedly gone face down in a big tray of ground round one day, stone dead from a heart attack at age thirty-five, to Miss Marcia Finnegan, the librarian at PS 110 on Delancey, and her gray cat, Colette. He’d even included his childhood idols, Steve and Bucky (not heroes yet, but _his_ heroes), just as they’d been then.

All this took place in New York City, Phil’s real home, not in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan. Neither did it happen in 1969, but in 1936 instead, the year he’d started Kindergarten. Which was to say, basically, that except for his birthday, July 8th, and his name, Phil’s entire life story was a cloth woven of lies.

His parents weren’t Robert and Julie Coulson (Robert, his supposed father, was really his Cheesehead Cousin Bobby, his Uncle Vernor’s son). His real dad was Tyrone Elliot Coulson, his mother Opal Rose Flaherty Coulson, and Phil knew for a fact that a mere week’s visit in Manitowoc would have sent his mom home screaming, because that’s exactly what happened the one time (and one time only) she came along for the yearly Coulson family get-together.

His mom had liked bustle. She'd hated the Wisconsin stillness, and the big lake gave her the creeps.

The thing was, after Steve Rogers, they’d never gotten the Super Soldier Serum quite right again, everyone knew it. Hydra had a version, that was certain, and had by all accounts given it to James Buchanan Barnes. But it wasn’t as if the U.S just gave up on the research. They’d had some bad results over the years, very old men, now, who were living out the last scraps of their lives in the secure wards of military hospitals spread across the country, but by time Phil enlisted in June of 1950, on the eve of the Korean Conflict, the formula they had was pretty damn good.

By the time Phil volunteered for the latest round of human trials, it had improved even more. Five men participated in the 1951 trials. Phil was the one who survived, and the serum didn’t so much make him a Super Soldier as it did a Super Spy. He was fast and smart and possessed a photographic memory. He could hide brilliantly, see in the dark and fool a polygraph effortlessly. Truth serum and similar had no effect. He aged slowly—at eighty-four he looked thirty years younger.

He could be stabbed through the heart and pop back to life, getting back up to speed with less than a month of recovery time.

Tahiti had been quite pleasant, though he felt really sorry for the doctors given such horrible false memories of Victor Frankensteining him back from the dead.

Loki should have tried stabbing Nick Fury instead of him. There was a man who had clearly been born with no heart at all.

Still, some things were necessary, even unpleasant ones. A secret was a secret, after all…

 _And a lie is a lie_ , his interior Jiminy Cricket reminded him.

Phil told Jiminy to shut his yap.

Lying was Phil’s talent, his true genius, if he had one. Ye gods, how he could lie! God, nature, or whoever, had blessed him with a level, soothing, medium-toned voice, ordinary as dirt. A calm, capable, trustworthy voice, and the face and physique to go with it. Allowed only two adjectives to describe his looks, they could be summed up fully and completely by the words “pleasant” and “ordinary.” If he was ever voted for an award, it would “Man Most Likely To be Taken for Ordinary” (or perhaps “Least Likely to Be Noticed”).

“How’d they do, sir?” asked Maria Hill, joining him in the observation booth that overlooked the Alley.

"Dismal," Phil answered. “They missed all thirteen villains but shot the priest, the butcher, the newsboy, the mother pushing twins in the baby buggy, two schoolgirls carrying books for the librarian, the librarian herself, and her cat. Oh, and to top it off, young Captain America.”

Maria winced.

Phil repeated his F.U.B.A.R. joke, then ordered, “Cut them loose.”

“All of them, sir?”

“Every last sorry soul. If you have any secret, buried frustrations, feel free to take them out on those sorry losers. They shot Colette, for god’s sake!”

“Colette, sir?”

“The cat, Maria. They shot the damn cat. Who did they mistake her for, Mr. Bigglesworth?”

Maria actually giggled, then sobered again. “Oh, by the way, Loki’s back from Britain and waiting for you in your office. He said he had his first day at the University today, that it went well, and that his mission in Britain was accomplished satisfactorily. He looks like crap, sir."

“Well, poor Loki,” Phil said. He and Maria exchanged complicated looks. “I won’t keep him late. It’s just a check-in, not a review. See you, Maria.”

His second-in-command rubbed her hands together briskly (and possibly gleefully). “Okay, then! Firing time!”

Phil’s record with S.H.I.E.L.D. held virtually no black marks. He brought a calm, orderly skill to his job, and with it an understanding that difficult orders must sometimes be followed, and sometimes be given. There’d never been anything that left a bad taste in his mouth.

Until Loki.

In Phil’s apartment lived one of the loves of his life (Clint’s claim to that position was not yet one hundred per cent secure, though he appeared to move closer toward cementing it day by day). Her name was Anastasia and she was truly every beautiful thing—tall, slender, elegant, graceful, with huge brown eyes and black-velvet ears. She was a Harlequin Great Dane—a creature of snow white fur with deepest black patches, and a magnificent soul.

She’d been scarcely more than a puppy when Phil adopted her, and still she had a heroic history. Every weekend her first owner, a Mr. Hobart, would take her with him to his mountain cabin in Eldred, up in the Catskills. Hobart must have been a good guy, because Anastasia came to Phil already loving, beautifully socialized, wonderfully trained. The poor man clearly hadn't expected to die suddenly, and the poor dog did the best she was able—cleared out the fridge, ate what she could get into out of the cupboards, emptied the garbage and her dog food bin. When all that was gone, she broke through the screen door, venturing into the forest in pursuit of what she might be able to catch, a sad, lonely, lovely creature with virtually no prey instinct at all.

The strongest instinct Anastasia possessed was to love, unflinchingly, and every night, night after night, she returned to her master, and lay by his side to warm him and keep him safe from harm.

She’d come to Phil still frail and wobbly, her satin coat dull, nearly every bone showing through the sparse covering of her short, snowy, ebony-patched coat.

Phil had loved her at once. He wasn’t a cat guy, he was a dog guy. He adored all dogs, even the little yippy ones with mean eyes, and all dogs adored him. Most of all, above any, he loved the graceful giants, the Great Danes. And above all Great Danes, he loved the Queen of His Heart, Anastasia.

Sometimes he thought the biggest sorrow he knew was that his beautiful one would almost certainly be doomed, like all her kind, to live a decade only, if that, and no more. Phil tried not to think of that time, because when the day came, he had no idea how he'd bear the loss.

When he’d seen Loki again, in Latveria, so destroyed, so gentle, cooperative and concerned for his loved ones, with his inky hair and white, white skin, so tall and elegant and frail, the image that took over was his first glimpse of Anastasia, his black and white beauty, trying so hard to show him how good she could be.

Phil, who was never rattled, never out of control, had been rattled completely, especially in light of what he’d been told to do.

The orders from on high were to break, Loki. Break him so completely he could never pose a threat again. Death wasn't desired, necessarily (angry thunder gods can be so inconvenient), but if death should happen to occur, then so be it.

Phil was good at his job. He excelled at doing his research. There were all the foods Loki couldn’t eat, the untended wounds, unhealing, the unexpected bout of adult chicken pox, the interrogations, the exercises Loki was performing on torn muscles and fractured bones, the menial tasks assigned to him that Loki could only complete by magic (and imagine their surprise when they found their corridor glimmering with actual emeralds) because he could barely use his shattered hands.

Phil received commendations for his work with the so-called god. The powers that be laughed uproariously at the tapes of Loki’s night terrors, they nearly screamed with glee as Loki painfully vomited up his indigestible meals, as he curled up on his cot night after night weeping bitterly, crying out his children's names.

Phil found himself lying awake on the sofa most nights, sleepless with self-disgust, a vodka-tonic balanced on his chest, even on the nights Clint stayed over, leaving his boyfriend and his dog to share the bed without him.

“Seriously, Phil,” Clint told him, “You gotta find a way to cut the poor kid loose. Believe me, lover—and don’t ask me how—but this is not the dude who fucked with us. You’re not a guy who does this kind of crap, sugar beet. You’re not a vengeance guy. You’re not a torture guy. Okay, you sneak, you lie. You obfuscate and bamboozle, even, but this is whack. This is soul-destroying stuff. It’s not you.”

Phil had definitely known the truth of his lover's words. What they’d asked of him was wrong. It made him sick. This was not what Americans did. Or, if they did, not what they were supposed to do.

Clint didn’t judge him, he knew all about orders, but this would destroy them both if it went on.

Despite the hellacious ass-chewing he received, Phil had felt ludicrously grateful to the stuck-up British Minister. He was no coward, Phil hoped, but given the choice of telling his superiors, “I’m not going to do this anymore, it’s sick and wrong,” and being able to shrug and say, “I know it sucks, but he’s already broken, as per request, and the brat’s Her Majesty’s godson or some frickin’ thing. Let Stark and the Asgardian watch him, and if he acts up—which, seriously, since you’ll observe the guy can’t feed himself or tie his shoes, is not going to happen—pawn him off on the Brits.”

It worked. He felt like crap.

Phil still felt like crap where Loki was concerned. Anastasia always occupied Phil’s office during the day, and from the first of his bi-weekly check-ins, Loki had been entranced. He was still in a wheelchair then, which initially made the dog slightly nervous, but by the third visit Anastasia was leaning against Loki’s shoulder. By the fifth visit she had her head in Loki’s lap for the whole meeting. Phil was delayed for the ninth meeting, but when he entered his office he found Anastasia draped decoratively over the couch, looking drowsy and blissful, her head on Loki’s knee, Loki fondling her ear with his wrecked fingers.

Loki had blood all over his face.

“What did you do?” Phil demanded. “What did you do?”

“Forgive me.” Loki held up a bloody hand as if to fend off an attack. It made Phil wonder what his people had been up to where the god of mischief was concerned. “No, please, Director, never would I harm beauteous Anastasia!”

“How do you even know her name?” Phil snapped.

“From her… I know not…” He mimed something coming down from his throat. “Ah! From the… tags. The tags upon her collar. Please, never would I hurt her. I wished to grant a boon to you, for you saw me released from my imprisonment, and I did not die ere I saw my loved ones.”

Phil dug in his bottom desk drawer for his box of wet-wipes, meant for cleaning Anastasia’s paws on muddy days. “Tidy up. Then tell.”

He had to give it to Loki, he really tried, but those were not, at that moment, working hands. Phil remembered the heedless crunch of slender bones under his agents’ boots, and felt a little sick yet again.

“Forgive me, please, Director,” Loki said, clearly ashamed, from his tense posture and the way he hung his head. “I work diligently with the physical therapist Tony sends and my hands improve, but the way is slow. I had no thought, just now, that the blood would flow so heavily. Once the power was as water from the tap, but now its claws tear at me. I pray pardon that I have discomfited you.”

He sagged back against the wall, still gazing at Anastasia. “Know you, it is in her, not to think as a man thinks, but yet to feel the clock of nature and the shortness of her own span, and to grieve, for she loves you well. I only bound the marking of her time to yours, so that while you thrive, she thrives, when you are old, she will be aged but hale, and when you pass on to other lands, then will she gently close her eyes and follow where you lead her. Have I done wrong?” Loki looked as anxious as Phil had ever seen him. “I understand not. Show me, please, Director, where I have gone wrong?”

 _You poor, confused, kind-hearted, alien kid_ , Phil thought, taking the wipes and giving Loki a gentle but thorough cleaning. “No, Loki, you did good. Honestly. It’s all fine.”

Loki’s relief struck Phil as nearly heartbreaking. He sat trembling violently, with his ruined hands twisted in his lap.

 _What have I done?_ Phil thought. _Damnation, what have I done?_

 

When Phil returned to his office from Coulson’s Alley, Loki was lying on his office carpet in a superlatively-tailored black suit, a similarly impressive emerald-green shirt and an discrete-yet-splendid emerald-green tie. His head rested on Anastasia’s shoulder, and he stroked her soft white neck while speaking to her softly in a foreign tongue, the two of them making Phil’s entire floor a sea of long, lean, elegant black-and white creature.

“Anastasia says, Director,” Loki told him without preamble, “She saw one of her kind in the park today with ears of which she was inordinately jealous. She says they pointed starkly upright, like unto the ears upon the hood of the Manbat.”

“Batman, Loki,” Phil murmured. “He’s called Batman.”

Loki made one of his la-de-dah hand-gestures, indicating, clearly, “potato, potahto.” “She insists that I must make her ears even so, that she be even more lovely, elegant, and pleasing unto the eye. However, I insisted we must ask you first, as you are he-who-guards her.”

“You’re honestly discussing canine fashions with my dog? You’re one very weird man, Loki.”

“After, I can set them again as they were, if you like them not.”

“Right now I’d like one of you to get up,” Phil said mildly. “As I need someplace to put my feet.”

Anastasia slunk away guiltily to the sofa, with a look that said she knew full well she’d been caught cheating on him with another man.

Loki leaped to his own feet and, just as promptly, crashed back down to the floor on his bottom, letting out a low, pained moan.

“Your head’s too far from your feet,” Phil said, trying to sound friendly and unconcerned, but Loki had started sweating buckets suddenly, and shaking like the proverbial leaf.

“No,” the god said haltingly. “No… My work was slightly tiring today. Only a moment… Please forgive... Strange… Very…” He keeled over on his side, out stone cold on the rug, which made Anastasia slither down again, whining and pushing at Loki’s chest with her huge head, bathing his face with her towel-sized tongue.

Despite the attention, Loki remained dead to the world.

 _Jesus!_ Phil thought, and knelt.

At least Loki wasn’t dead; the pulse raced in his throat. His skin felt also burning hot. Wasn’t Loki supposed to feel cool? Wasn’t he actually a Frost Giant? You’d think a Frost Giant would be fairly… frosty.

He speed-dialed Tony Stark, who as per usual, wasn’t available, and left a ridiculous message. “Stark! Director here. I have your Loki on my carpet. Please collect.”

“Dammit,” Phil said. “Dammit. Dammit.”

He stared down at the panting, dead-white, oversized god on his carpet, and his very own dog trying to comfort said god, and found himself texting Clint, _Help me!!!_

Clint’s solutions to problems tended to be inventive, if nothing else. They also often seemed to involve climbing things, or ductwork, but perhaps not in this case.

 _Yo, poopsy?_ Clint texted back. Clint and his stupid pet names. No one in his whole life had ever called Phil pet names.

Phil kind of loved them, even the silly ones.

_Sick god on rug please advise?_

Clint showed up less than a quarter of an hour later with a bottle of club soda, a sprayer of carpet cleaner, a roll of paper towels, and the god of thunder.

“I wasn’t sure if you meant sick or _sick_ sick, whether you needed your rug cleaned or Loki-removal services,” he explained. “I came prepared.”

Phil couldn’t help himself, it just popped out, “Clint, I kind of love you.” He realized he meant it too, in both senses—that his personal Cupid had his back, always, and that he… well… loved him.

Clint’s bright blue eyes caught his for a moment before his grin spread nearly ear-to-ear. “Yeah, I love you too, dumpling.”

Thor had already woken his brother and was helping him to his feet. Clint moved to take Loki’s other arm, the slender god swaying like a sapling in high winds between the two powerfully-built men.

“I left my car illegally parked in the fire zone, Lok,” Clint was saying. “Think you can make it?”

Loki mumbled something, dropping his head onto Clint’s shoulder.

“Not right now,” Clint answered softly, trading glances with Thor. “She can’t be here right now, Loki. She’s… uh… sleeping. How about if we get you Kurt instead? Would that be good?”

Loki moaned again. It sounded dire.

“You heard him,” Thor rumbled at Clint. “Shield-Brother, you heard him sending!”

Clint gave the thunder-god another look, one that seemed to mean a multitude of things, then tossed Phil a grin.

“Half an hour, babealicious. Your place?”

Phil gave him a quick nod. He could feel himself blushing, and nearly enjoyed the sensation.

Slowly, the two led away the discombobulated god of mischief and lies, each supporting a side,

Loki’s head still flopped onto the archer’s shoulder.

Phil sank down in his highly comfortable and ergonomically-correct chair, rubbing his temples. “My life has become strange, Anastasia,” he remarked.

His dog whined softly.

“You really can’t rely on gods, sweet girl. They’ll love you and leave you.”

Anastasia whined again, then stretched her long self down from the sofa. She padded over and pressed her huge head to his chest, just at the spot where the scepter pierced his heart.

“I don’t know,” Phil told her. “I mean, I know he’s not really the same guy. Not really. But this forgiveness thing is hard, my lovely. How do I just let go?”

When he looked down into Anastasia’s face, her soft brown eyes seemed to hold all the secrets of the universe.

“It’s easy,” they seemed to say. “Just open your hands and let it drift free…”


	3. Life on Midgard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony goes to pick up his wedding tuxedo. All is not well. Later, Clint and Director come for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fairytale Tony is thinking of is "The Tinderbox" by Hans Christian Andersen.
> 
> Does the rest of the world play Sorry!? It's a fairly simple game made more interesting by providing multiple opportunities to seriously mess up your opponents' strategies. In my family it was always played with much evil cackling and insincere shouts of, "Sorry!"
> 
> Yes, "dumbledore" is indeed an old fashioned word for "bumblebee."

* * *

Tony rarely found himself at a loss for what to say. This happened to be one of those times. He was speechless. He was literally without speech. Finally he managed a croaky, “Hap…?”

Happy’s jaw had dropped. His mouth hung open in a silent “O.”

Tony guessed he now knew the meaning of the sign, done in slightly wobbly calligraphy on off-white parchment and taped to the back of the cash register, which said, “GOD’S Law Over Man’s!” The thing was, he’d seen it but not seen it, hadn’t thought it applied to him. His love for Loki, and Loki’s for him, felt so pure, so beautiful, so—for lack of a better and more secular word—holy.

He felt shivery with anger. Ten years he’d been coming to these people. Ten fucking years! Every Christmas he cut them an extra, generous check, in thanks for good work.

It seemed Cristobal and Company, Gentlemen’s Fine Tailors, had received their last check from Tony Stark. He wanted to travel back in time and shake them until every single nickel fell out of their pockets. He’d been their dupe. Their fool.

Tony despised feeling like anyone’s fool. It fucked with his fundamental view of himself. He wanted to rip to shreds every suit in his closet.

“Um, well…” Happy choked out at last. “Maybe we should be grateful Mr. Howlett wasn’t available today?”

It took Tony a minute to catch up. In his mind, Logan was Logan (or, alternatively, Wolverine —“The Wolverine,” for more formal occasions). Even Kurt never called him James unless making a very specific point, like a mom (or family butler, as the case might be, remembering all the "Anthony Edward Starks!" from Jarvis he'd been on the receiving end of in his formative years's) using a kid’s full name when he’s been naughty, so Tony had a tendency to forget that Logan was, legally, James Howlett.

“Tell me,” Tony said, semi-rhetorically, gazing at the pants to his Hugo Boss tuxedo, which now ended, irreparably, six inches below his knees. “Is this wedding doomed? Is it totally fucking doomed?”

Happy, being almost always very much like his name, thought about that for a minute.

“Boss, ya know, your suit aside, I’d say blessed. You’re marrying Dr. Boss, the love of your life, and getting a beautiful family in the bargain. That can’t equal doomed, even if your jerkwad tailor did kinda give you a tuxedo with Capri pants.”

“Capris, that’s the word I was looking for.” In five seconds Tony went from simmering rage to bubbling with laughter. “Hap, I have Hobbit pants! I’m dressed for a formal Hobbit wedding!”

Happy started giggling, and that got Tony going and they were still laughing their asses off nearly five minutes later when the proprietor, smirk firmly in place, came to the dressing room to investigate.

Happy got to his feet, and loomed. He had a talent for it. Looming. Looking every inch Mr. Security Guy with his big head and big, broad chest. Like he could walk through a room and people would literally bounce off him.

Tony draped a companionable arm around the shoulders of his tailor-for-the-past-ten-years. “Mr. Christobal! Just the dude I was hoping to see!”

Maybe it was Tony’s manic grin, but Mr. C. started to look slightly nervous.

“You made a choice here…” Tony held up his phone. Between bursts of laughter he’d been rapid-texting with his thumb. He showed the tailor the screen. “Hey! Looky-looky! Congrats to me! Looks like I’m your new landlord!”

Slightly nervous turned into deeply nervous.

“You know what I always tell my kids? ‘Speak your mind. Use your words.’ See, you could have said, ‘Mr. Stark, my best-customer-of-the-past-decade, I don’t choose to alter your suit, or the suits of your groomsmen for your deviant wedding, because I am a narrow-minded bigot who gets my life-skills from a 2000-plus year-old-book that I don’t actually understand from a historical standpoint, which has been thoroughly mistranslated in all sorts of places, and also has been worked over a number of times by some very bad dudes with very definite scary-ass political agendas.' See how easy that was? If you’re going to be a shithead, own being a shithead. Don’t mess with some unsuspecting guy’s Hugo Boss pants. What did you think I was going to do? Cry? Give you lots of free publicity so some other whiny bigot could set you up a crowd-sourcing fund and let you haul in a hundred grand because big, mean ol’ Tony Stark was picking on you? I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction. You think I can’t replace a Hugo Boss suit the way you’d buy a pack of gum at the newsstand?

” Tony dropped his Hugo Boss Hobbit pants, kind of wishing he’d gone commando, by way of a political statement, instead of wearing a discrete pair of black silk boxers.

“However…” He pulled on his jeans. “Needless to say, I’ll be taking my future tailoring needs elsewhere. We’ll also be looking at the terms of your lease next time it renews, as I’m thinking of using the extra money you’ll be paying—in fact every last shiny penny of your rent money from here on out—to help fund equality-related causes. Lots and lots of equality related causes. A ‘plethora,’ as my fabulously sexy smarty-pants soon-to-be-husband might say."

He tugged on the front of his tuxedo shirt, spraying studs all over the dressing room, suddenly furious again. “I’m sure it was all worthwhile for you, as long as you get to use your powers of sanctimoniousness for evil against two decent people who love each other like crazy.” Tony pulled on his faded Metallica tee and leather jacket.

“Oh, and you can keep the tux. Display it in the window as an example of your excellent work. Let folks know the kind of customer service they can look forward to at your fine establishment.” He sat down on the room’s second chair to put on his boots. “So _au revoir_ , Christobal, see you at rent time, okay? Hap? Ready to roll?”

“Sure thing, Boss.” Happy moved his looming over to right in front of the tailor, dropping a meaty hand onto Mr. Christobal’s skinny shoulder. “If you haven’t already mangled Mr. Howlett’s and my suits for political reasons, we’d like them back, please. Mr. Howlett is not an easy guy to fit. He also really hates standing around being measured. And he’s a trained killer! An army guy for years and years. Of course, he probably wouldn’t actually kill you…”

“Probably,” Tony echoed. “Not willing to bet 100%, though. He does have that little temper…”

Christobal scurried off for the fortunately-unaltered suits. Tony guessed the tailor’s plot had been to simply leave them as-is which, particularly in Logan’s case, would not have been a good look, Logan not being what you’d call height/muscle proportionate.

“Hap,” Tony said, as they left his former tailor’s establishment. “I need a drink. Maybe a couple. Maybe a couple drinks and a cigar.”

“You need to go home to Dr. Boss and get feeling better,” Happy told him. “And no driver’s seat for you. You’re too pissed off. You’ll dent my car.”

“It’s my car,” Tony argued, in full-on grump mode. “And Loki has Director this PM, probably followed by working on his shit for my asshole Board of Directors half the night.”

“Sit shotgun or in the back. Your choice, Boss. And for Dr. Boss’s sake, by way of decompression. I’ll take you out for a burger. My treat. I know a place. It’s in an old train car. You’ll like it.”

“I do like a train car diner,” Tony said, though the truth was he liked Happy’s first suggestion better. He really did want more than anything to go home to Loki and cuddle up to him, getting healed of his anger and shame inside the circle of Loki’s embrace. Loki who loved him and thought he was wonderful, even when he didn’t feel wonderful.

He hated that a smarm-meister like Christobal had made him feel shame at all. He hated that Loki had to squander the tiny amount of energy he still possessed crafting a way to explain himself to the pricks (of both genders) on the Stark Industries Board. One or two of them, at least, were bound to be total assholes to him, and as much as poor Loki tried to conceal his sky-high stress levels, Tony could still detect the subtle signals that he was losing it inch-by-inch, drowning slowly in pain, grief and tension.

He sat across from Happy in the shiny silver railroad car, and drowned his fries in ketchup, slurped his shake, and brooded. He took his burger apart, eating it, minus the bun, layer by layer, thereby obtaining the least possible pleasure from the experience, trying to pretend to himself that he was already on his honeymoon, goofing around at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with Loki, annoying the hell out of his new husband because he couldn’t resist taking innumerable selfies of the two of them with the love shining in their faces… Trying to pretend that every difficult, stress-spiking, angry-making, demeaning thing lay safely behind them for all time.

After parting from Happy in the garage, Tony ran into Phil and Clint waiting outside the penthouse elevator. Clint looked shifty. Director had the look of a man trying hard not to look shifty, and almost succeeding, but not quite making it. The only one who looked in any way dependable was Phil’s giant-ass dog, who leaned her ginormous head against Tony's chest and gave him huge puppy-eyes. She appeared to be both apologizing and distancing herself from the actions of the humans.

Tony tried to remember which fairy tale it was that had the dogs with eyes the size of teacups, saucers and millstones. Loki would know. He always knew that kind of thing.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Director?” Tony asked drily, ushering the visitors into the elevator before him. “I know Loki showed up to his appointment. He texted that he was waiting for you. In your office.”

“He did, he did,” Phil assured him. “As per our agreement. Nothing wrong there.”

“He wasn’t feeling so great,” Clint chimed in. “Thor and I got him home okay, though.”

“It took both you and his brother…?”

“He may be a bean-pole, Tony, but he’s, like, nine feet tall,” Clint said. “It’s not even so much that he’s heavy, but he’s awkward as hell to wrangle. Like when he first came to earth and he was so messed up he could barely walk after a bit and, yeah, okay, he was a lot heavier then, but…”

Clint blinked, realizing what he was saying. “Um. Yeah.”

It hit Tony then—of course Clint knew about the mind control. Loki’s Thanos-and-the-Other-sponsored mind-control, that was. He’d been in Loki’s mind and Loki had been in his.

He thought of Loki’s second fall to earth, right after the kids were born, at the start of their Latverian adventure. Of Clint breaking Loki’s jaw with a kick when he was already so hurt, knocking him out cold so he couldn’t even speak for himself. A second memory (not personally witnessed by Tony, but existing in sharp images in Loki's mind), of his soon-to-be-husband healing Clint's own broken jaw, in the dungeons of Castle Doom.

_You bastard_ , Tony thought, his mindless fury resurfacing with a vengeance. _You fucking bastard_.

“Okay, okay, I know,” Clint said softly, like he’d read Tony’s thoughts. “I’m not proud. Really.”

The giant dog whined. Disapprovingly, it seemed.

“It seems like even the damn dog knows better.” The fury seemed to want to do one of Kurt’s sky-high backflips into something performing a tightrope act between disgust and depression. “Christ, Clint. The stuff you said on board the Quinjet, coming back from Latveria…”

“I know.” Clint actually squirmed a little. “Forgive me for having fucking mixed feelings. Those events weren’t exactly the high point of my life or career.”

The door whooshed open and Tony keyed them into the penthouse, the day sitting on his shoulders like a 200 pound backpack.

_Has Clint told the others?_ he wondered. _Has he not told the others? Do they know and not care?_

If they knew and didn’t care, Tony thought maybe he hated them all, at least a little. Not Thor, of course, but the rest of them. More than a little, actually. How could they not get it into their thick superhero heads that their constant disapproval was eating poor Loki up alive?

“Okay, I get that,” Clint began, “But…” He noticed their looks.

“You can hear me,” Tony said quietly. They all hung back in the corridor, at the very least not wanting the kids to hear their squabble. “You can fucking hear me. Who else?”

“You heard Loki, too.” Phil said, staring at his boyfriend. “In my office.”

“Phil…”

“Seriously, Clint.” Director put a firm hand on the archer’s arm. “If you hear Loki, what have you heard?”

“Nothing,” Tony snapped, “Because there’s nothing to hear. Nothing bad. I never heard anything bad. Not National Security, Avengers Assemble bad. Only Loki’s personal badness, from having been forced to live pretty much the shittiest life anyone was forced to live in the history of ever, which is none of your goddamn business.”

Clint hooked a thumb toward Tony. “What he said. Phil…”

Mrs. Ransome popped around the corner, wooden spoon in hand. Tony had no idea if she was a grandmother or not, but she exuded a strong sense of the hip-but-not-too-hip grandmother. She narrowed her eyes behind her silver-rimmed glasses and leveled the spoon in their direction, like Mrs. Weasley, in the Harry Potter books, about to blast a handful of Deatheater asses to hell and beyond.

“Boys, you are going to have to keep it down,” she said. “Loki isn’t well enough tonight for your shenanigans.”

The spoon wavered between Director and Clint. “Are these two staying to dinner, Mr. Stark?”

“Are you?” Tony said, making it neutral, neither welcoming nor dismissive.

“What are we having?” Clint asked.

“It isn’t polite to ask,” Mrs. Ransome said sternly.

“Forgive Clint.” Tony was finding a lot of use for his dry voice that evening. “Circus folk raised him. And wolves. In a barn.”

Mrs. Ransome sniffed. “Mr. Wagner was raised by circus folk, and his manners are always delightful.”

From his perfectly bland expression, Phil was clearly snickering at his boyfriend on the inside.

“Yes, they’re staying,” Tony said, “If it doesn’t disrupt your plans, Mrs. R. I know whatever you’re making will be wonderful, and we’ll do our best to maintain a calming atmosphere.”

She gave a small, grim nod and returned to her domain.

Under normal circumstances, the kids would have been jumping on Tony the minute he stepped through the door--if he was alone, or in the company of any of the people he mentally called “the chosen few,” the ones his kids accepted as family, the ones they remained themselves for, not bothering to shapeshift into safer forms: Kurt, Logan, Kitty, Pepper and Natasha, Happy, Supervisor Jorge and his wife Anita, Thor and Jane. With everyone else, they maintained masks of quiet, unchildishly perfect manners and shapes that were like, but not exactly, their own. It always broke Tony’s heart a little, knowing they were so cautious, so young. Knowing that they had to be, in this hard world.

“Yo, younglings!” he called out, but not too loud, not wanting to arouse the wrath of Mrs. R. and her Spoon of Doom a second time.

“Here,” Hela called back, just as quietly.

In the living room, Tony found Thor engaged in a game of _Sorry!_ with the kids, (and apparently losing--Hela, of course, seemed to be winning), the board and its primary-colored pieces spread out on the coffee table.

On the couch, Loki appeared to be sleeping the sleep of the dead, one thin, pale hand still resting on the keyboard of his laptop, on the end of the table not occupied by the board game.

“Good evening, Uncle Tony, Mr. Barton, Director Coulson,” Jöri and Hela chorused, so stiff they might have been both forcibly over-starched and then had steel rods inserted anally.

Tony truly hated to see his sweet kids that way--so fearful and untrusting and fake.

Fen however, remained Fen, eternally. He let out a cry of wild joy, already morphing with his second step away from the table, sailing easily over the back of the couch.

Loki jerked awake instantly. “Fen! Fenrir!” he shouted in pure panic. “Fenrir, no!”

Fen, though, was wriggling happily on his back on the carpet, tail going a mile a minute--not in his usual wolf-shape of varying size at all, but in the form of chubby, ungainly Great Dane puppy. Phil’s gigantic but elegant dog lay down beside him and began to lick and nuzzle him all over. If a dog could be said to look genuinely delighted, Phil’s dog did.

“Loki,” Phil said mildly, “You know Anastasia better than anyone. You know she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

_“Ég óttaðist, og ég veit ekki af hverju. Of margir draumar brenglaður í kringum mig,_ " Loki murmured, pressing a hand to his forehead, clearly dizzy and only half awake.

“Loki is sorry, honored Director, Shield-brother Clint,” Thor interpreted. “He says he does not know why he felt afraid. His dreams entangled him.”

“No need to apologize to us, Loki,” Phil responded pleasantly. “We actually ought to apologize to you. We didn’t mean to wake you. I just stopped in on the way home to make sure you were okay. You had me worried this afternoon.”

“I am very well,” Loki said, obviously lying through his teeth. “Please sit, Director, Clint. Very well indeed. I have had a rest.”

He turned stiffly to look at Tony, the wound on his back clearly pulling like hell. “The required documents are now complete, _hjarta minn_ , and in the hands of the print shop, without a trace of green, black or gold anywhere in the bindings, as requested.”

Loki’s voice held just the barest touch of bitterness. Tony knew what his colors meant to him—or partly knew. They weren’t just like his Iron Man red-and-yellow. They were… What was Loki’s word…? Totemic, that was it. Totemic. Magical, spiritual, wound up inextricably in his identity.

Hell, even Loki’s _seiðr_ was green, and his finger-snapping sparks green and gold. Sometimes Tony was afraid he, or life on Midgard in general, had started stripping away everything that made Loki himself, piece by piece—his colors, his unique manner of speech (that Loki never used now in public, unless they were among close and trusted friends), even his identity.

He couldn’t be _that_ Loki with extenuating circumstances, or _that_ Loki reformed. He had to be someone else entirely, since _that_ Loki could never be forgiven by the world. He'd always be seen as wicked, always evil, no other explanation asked for or wanted, totally undeserving of redemption of any sort.

Loki looked up at him, his eyes red, like he’d been crying. “Children,” he said, “You may play with Fen and Anastasia until dinner is served, if Director Coulson grants his permission. On the terrace, perhaps? There are excellent railings, for safely, Director.”

“Go for it, kids,” Phil told them, dropping casually into one of the overstuffed chairs. Clint took the other. “It’ll be a treat for Anastasia. Usually she only has old dudes like Clint and me to play with.”

“Jöri and I thank you,” Hela said, formally. She either hadn’t pinked up her pale skin the way she normally would, or had re-unpinked when Fen shifted, probably figuring, _why the hell not _?__

“I will supervise!” Thor bounded to his feet, following the kids outdoors.

“In Asgard, Thor always kept dogs,” Loki murmured, as Tony slid in beside him, wrapping his fiancé up in his arms. The heat came off him in waves, but Loki was shivering. Tony added the warm throw Pepper’s mom had knitted to the mix, which at least seemed to help a little.

“Here, Lady Jane says he must not keep any, as they two often from home, and neither, for safety, may Thor bring a pet to work, as you do, Director. I suspect she is correct in her thinking, yet it saddens my brother, for he is a friend to animals, and here may keep neither horse nor hound.” Loki’s mouth twitched slightly, nearly curving into a smile. “Keep in mind what I said to you this afternoon, for Anastasia has persuaded my children by cunning wiles, and her ears are not as they were. If you can find it in your heart, however, to forgive their impetuosity, Anastasia is very proud of herself, and feels inordinately beautiful.”

Clint stared. “You talk to his dog?” He turned to Phil. “He talks to your dog?”

“Loki is a man of many talents,” Phil said. Apparently it was his turn to try out his dry voice.

“My once-father would have called it indication of a low mind,” Loki said. “To concern one’s self with the baser creatures.”

“I thought he had his crows, or whatever.” Tony smoothed the damp and tousled black hair away from Loki’s forehead. “Jesus, you’re burning up, babe. Huggy and Muggy, right?”

“I am not, and they are Huginn and Muninn,” Loki corrected. “The Allfather’s ravens, but also…. not. Thought and Memory, their names mean, and so they are--they are constructs of magic, devices of recording, magnets of unspoken words and recollections, drawing such to them for keeping, like the Pensieve of Headmaster Bumblebee in the books of Harry Potter.”

“Dumbledore, babe,” Tony corrected. Loki must be feeling like shit. It wasn’t like him to get a book reference wrong.

“Yes.” Loki paused. “What did I say?”

“Bumblebee.”

“At times, the old words and the new words swarm in my head and confuse me.” Loki pressed his fingertips to his temples. “Dumbledore. Bumblebee. Which is correct again, Tony?”

Christ. He was fading fast, sagging limply now against Tony’s side.

“Sweetheart, how about if you call it a night and go get comfy?" Tony said. "I’ll bring you anything your heart desires, okay?”

“Did I please you, _hjarta minn_?” Loki’s hand groped blindly for Tony’s. “I did not procrastinate. I completed diligently the many papers, as you asked of me. I have considered well what I shall say when your Directing Board interrogates me. I will not lose another child of yours. Oh, belovéd, I swear to you, I shall never again betray you so. And they will never know, will they? Would they send me away from you if they came to know?”

“Clint, you want to give me a hand here?” Tony took a gentle hold on Loki’s arm. “See, I have the left, babe. Clint’s gonna take the right, and we’ll stroll on back to the bedroom. You did beautifully, and I’m so proud of you.”

Loki wobbled to his feet, pulling Tony with him. “You cannot deceive me. We have guests. It is forbidden to be absent from table when guests are present. Such is the law.”

He paused, then, as if listening, laughed suddenly. “Dear Clint, you amuse me, truly. He says in my head, Tony, ‘I think we can eat our damn spaghetti without your royal presence, highness.’ He meant to be contemptuous, perhaps, but the jest is funny still, is it not?” Loki swayed dangerously, and probably would have gone down if they hadn’t been holding him firmly.

“Oh…? I am not in Asgard…?” He sounded so uncertain it made Tony’s chest hurt, but the two of them used the moment of uncertainty to propel Loki forward, all the way to the bedroom.

Clint was one hundred per cent correct—wrangling the god was no easy task, and only sheer dumb luck made him collapse onto the bed instead of the floor.

“No, you’re not in Asgard,” Tony said softly, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking the damp tangles back from Loki’s face again. “You’re here, safe with me. I love you and the hard part will be over soon, my baby.”

“And if I feel unwell, I may yet lie here, though there be guests at table?”

“Even though there be guests at table,” Tony answered, accepting the cool, wet washcloth Clint passed to him, wiping down Loki’s hot, sweat-slick skin.

“Just rest now, my honey. Just rest. You’ve done everything you needed to do today.”

Loki smiled a little at that, and was asleep like turning off a light.

“Not a word, Clint,” Tony snapped at the archer. “Not one word to the others, got it?”

“I already knew, remember?” Clint answered, sounding confused, almost hurt. “And I haven’t told anyone. I have my faults, sure, but blabbing wasn’t among them last time I checked.”

“Yeah. Okay. Got it,” Tony said.

“Got it,” Clint echoed.

The stares they traded were stony, maybe, but not actually hostile. And the look on the archer’s face, when he glanced at Loki one last time, might actually have been called tender.


	4. The Club of Boys and Girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki reports to his community service job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and long-time children's program host who started each program by changing his jacket and dress shoes for a cardigan and sneakers. The program was aimed at teaching gentle life lessons and telling kids they were loved and special. And, after last chapter, a fine example of someone using his faith as an opportunity to do good.
> 
> _”Whaiāipo_ =darling (in Maori)
> 
> The ending of _The Catcher in the Rye_ always brings me to tears--the whole image of standing in the tall grass, catching the children before they can get hurt just hits me in the heart. It's so terribly easy for some kids to fall if there's no one standing by to catch them...

* * *

“Loki? That you?" Jorge Garcia emerged from the back cooler with a crate of individual milk cartons dangling from one hand, a big block of government-surplus cheddar cheese on the other arm, with a smaller block of the soy cheese, for AnaLuisa and Terrence, balanced on top. He’d heard rustling, but there was no one to be seen.

“That you, buddy?” he asked again.

The kids weren’t due at Boys’ and Girls’ Club for another half hour, and neither was Loki, but his assistant was, without doubt, a helpful kind of guy, who always came in early to set up when he could, mostly because he liked to do it. He wanted things to be nice for the children. He’d also promised to make up his time from the week he’d been absent, even though Jorge knew he wasn't feeling good.

Jorge had also guessed what might have (most likely) happened overseas, and had told Loki repeatedly that his presence totally wasn’t necessary, given the circumstances.

If nothing else, Loki was already way ahead on his hours, even with the absence.

He’d sounded so scared, though, and now that Jorge thought he’d figured out why that might be, it hurt to hear. It wasn’t right, not for someone like Loki, who had class and integrity oozing out his fingertips. That was Loki, though, just like one of the boys in his own books, one of the _Sons of Asgard_ boys, only grown to manhood—a wounded fairytale prince in exile.

Jorge liked helping people. Helping people and also getting paid for it beat every other thing he could possibly do for a living, and for that reason he’d been employed at non-profits of one sort or another his entire working life. He'd also supervised his fair share of folks sentenced to community service along the way, and very few had impressed him. Along with a general lack of remorse for whatever they’d done (not that Jorge cared particularly--it wasn't his place to judge) the whole “ _not really sorry, but sorry I got caught_ ” mentality irked the hell out of him. Most of these unwilling "volunteers" had it down to a science exactly how much they had to do to make their hours, and that’s what they did, not a lick more.

People messed up, Jorge understood that, but messing up didn't exempt a person from going on to actually give a damn, especially when it came to important things. The folks who came to him that way rarely cared about the job, or the community they were supposed to be serving, they cared about getting off the hook, and even Jorge, who tried always to see the best in people, had to work really hard not to be disgusted by their attitudes.

Loki, though… Loki was the only one—the _only_ one—who’d ever talked to him, in that situation, about sacrifice and atonement, honor and dishonor, with that wonderfully earnest-but-innocent look he’d get sometimes, the one that almost always made his wife Anita say, “Aww, Jorge, I just want to bundle him up, take him home and feed him soup.”

Whatever Loki had done, whatever he'd been punished for doing, had nearly destroyed him, that much was clear.

Jorge had been surprised by how much he’d missed Loki when he was away, more than any of his other helpers—not just for the help, but to have around the place, to have him to talk to, to have Loki comfort and support the kids, with whom he was just… magical, there was no better word for it.

Loki had a funny way of putting things sometimes, especially when he got excited, but he was also whip-smart. And charming. And sweet. Jorge wouldn’t ever ask what action had landed him on never-ending community service, and Loki didn’t volunteer the information—all that mattered was that it didn’t involve anything inappropriate with children. He’d been assured it didn’t by the powers-that-be, and that was enough for him. Otherwise, he’d just mind his beeswax, as an annoying boy he’d gone to elementary school with used to say.

Buzzy Custiss, his name had been, because of the beeswax, and because his actual initials had been B.Z. Funny how a person remembered things.

“Lok? Seriously? That you?” Jorge set his snack-supplies on the counter and went in search.

He found Loki literally in the closet, still standing, slumped against the wall mostly asleep with his really excellent suit coat in one hand, a hanger in the other.

Jorge took the jacket and hanger away from him and hung up the coat, taking down the soft cardigan Loki would always change into instead, like Mr. Rogers, because even these days the building still got cold. Right now, Loki was shivering like crazy.

“Hey,” Jorge said. “Hey, Lo, put on your sweater if you’re cold. What’s up, buddy? You really are sick, aren’t you?”

“As promised, I am not contagious. Truly,” Loki told him, hugging the sweater to his chest. “Please be assured, Jorge, never would I endanger the children, under any circumstance.”

“I know that, Lo.” Jorge put his hands on Loki’s shoulders, steering him into the main room. “Go sit down on the couch. Put on your sweater. Would you like some tea?”

“Tea would be delightful, thank you,” Loki answered, struggling into his cardigan painfully and slowly, as if the garment was an unfamiliar thing he had to puzzle out before he could wear it.

When Jorge turned around from putting on the kettle, Loki was curled up on the couch, mostly asleep again.

Jorge sighed and fetched the in-ear thermometer and the ugly-but-warm gray blanket from the sick room.

“Loki, man, I’m taking your temperature.”

“No,” Loki muttered. “No. I am not contagious. It is only the surgery of John Watson, done in primitive conditions and not John’s fault in any way…”

He startled violently when the thermometer beeped.

Jorge had to close his eyes for a minute to get emotion under control. He was, he fully admitted, a big old teddy bear. A big, soft, soppy teddy bear. He’d learned to speak Loki fairly fluently in their months of acquaintance, and even a brief phone conversation with Loki the night before—that, and his wife’s phenomenal intuition—had been enough to inform him what “the surgery of John Watson” probably entailed.

It wasn’t right. Loki was a good person.

Terrible things, Jorge reminded himself, happened to wonderful people all the time.

“Ssh, be calm, Lo. Be calm.” Jorge peered at the screen. One of these days he'd really have to pay attention Anita's gentle nagging, and invest in a pair of reading glasses of his own. Especially since, the night before, she’d caught him borrowing her pink ones, with the rhinestones, and had taken photographic evidence.

Luckily, he had long arms, and if he squinted... “Shoot, Loki, 102.6? Why did you even come in today?”

Jorge squatted beside the couch, resting his hand on his assistant's shoulder. “I don’t care whether you’re contagious or not, buddy. You’re really sick, and I’m calling your family to come take you home.”

Loki surged upright, hands twisting in the blanket, nearly hyperventilating with fear. “No, please, I beg of you, dear friend… It is my duty. I must…”

Jorge parked himself on the couch beside Loki, hand still on his shoulder. Lord, he was thin. Jorge could feel bones even through the thick sweater. “Loki, please, don’t lose your crap over this. Please. _Madre de Dios_ , I wish I could fix this by just phoning your parole officer or something. Is there someone I can call? Anyone? Someone… ah… someone here on earth? You know I’ll vouch for you, my friend, if you just tell me how.”

“It is not…” Loki began haltingly. “You understand, I see, that it is not for me as it is for others, Jorge. Both because of what I have done, and who I am. I must do as I am ordered. I must not ask for favors or exceptions, or be seen to think myself above my fellow man. I must be contrite and humble, and crawl upon my belly as a worm does, should it be required of me. Truly, I fear for myself, yet far more I fear that my children be taken from me.”

“I know it’s a different situation, and difficult too--but, Loki, for taking a sick day when you're actually ill? Everyone takes sick days, except maybe those lucky dogs who never get sick. And you are legitimately sick, man. Really, I would talk to whoever you needed me to talk to. I’d do anything you needed.”

Loki’s eyes searched his face, and what finally shut Jorge up was that there was nothing in them but fear, a manifestation of the same panic he’d heard in Loki’s voice the night before.

Loki had said a little, here and there, about his father—or former father, as Loki called him, who seemed in Loki’s eyes all-powerful.

Don’t most fathers seem all-powerful in their children’s eyes, until those children grow up and even the most gigantic of tyrants are rendered small, petty, and mean?

Jorge had seen it happen again and again. Imagine growing up with a father who really was all-powerful, as well as all-watchful, capricious and cruel. What would that do to a person?

Loki wasn’t, usually, a fearful guy, but in terms of fearing what his old man might do…? He had every reason to feel frightened, it seemed.

“ _Whaiāipo_ ,” Jorge Anaru Garcia had said to his bride, a few months past, as they sat on opposite ends of the couch with their legs intertwined in the middle, eating Chinese food out of the paper cartons with chopsticks. “So, the new guy started today.”

Anita smiled. A tiny piece of noodle hung out over her lip, but her tongue collected it neatly and sucked it inside. It was cute, the way she did things like that, unselfconscious and cute.

They were, Jorge thought, still very much at the (as Sting might say) “ _Every Little Thing She Does is Magic_ ” stage of their marriage, but he had a feeling they might always be that way. As a guy who was generally pretty happy with the life-choices he’d made, he could safely say that marrying Anita had been the best choice of them all. She was wonderful, so far beyond lovable it was crazy. He wanted them to be one of those couples who died holding hands at age 120, still as head-over-heels in love as when they started.

“Did you want to hear?” Jorge asked, by way of a teaser.

He could always get Anita’s instant attention with the promise of a story. He thought of it as one of her many great beauties.

“Tell me?” she’d said, leaning forward with her eyes wide and eager.

Jorge told her all about Loki. He’d been right about a few things back then, it turned out, wrong about more. About more still he either continued to be undecided, or maybe would never know.

It wasn’t that Loki chose to be reticent, as such—though he sometimes was exactly that, at least a little--it was more that his frame of reference remained deeply, deeply off, as if it didn’t in any way belong even to the Iceland or Britain of his youth, but maybe to an entirely different world. These were some facts he’d gleaned about Loki as their friendship increased, that Jorge had determined might actually be true: Loki had a big brother, by adoption, named Thor. When Jorge said big, he meant Thor was at least two-thirds his own size and within five inches of his height, which made Thor Friggason the single other biggest real person he’d seen in his life. Thor also looked exactly the way he’d expect a person named Thor to look, which was like a stereotypical Viking, with long, windblown blond hair and blue eyes. He was also one of the two handsomest men Jorge had ever seen who weren’t on a movie screen—the other being, of course, Loki himself, in a way that was equal-but-opposite to Thor’s manly-man beauty.

“There is a God!” Anita had said the first time she saw them together.

Both brothers blinked at her in utter perplexity. They had, also equally, no idea of their combined effect.

Thor, Jorge had found out, was in training to be a chef. He seemed kind, not stupid, but maybe what’s sometimes what’s called simple—unworldly, perhaps, and fiercely protective of his younger brother. Thor’s English tended toward the extremely formal and also the slightly weird, and when the brothers talked together Loki’s was the same way, though at nearly all other times he spoke impeccable modern English, though with a far more British than American vocabulary.

Loki had a fiancé named Tony, whom he nearly worshiped, despite the fact that it appeared Tony had a bit of a mouth on him, and a bit of an attitude to go with it. Weeks passed before Jorge realized who Tony actually was--the billionaire industrialist, Anthony Stark, who owned Stark Tower and big chunks of the rest of the world, and plastered his name all over the million things he’d invented.

Money didn’t really seem to mean much to Loki, except in terms of providing for his children, and keeping himself in art supplies, books and handsomely-tailored clothes. A better person for a man like Stark to marry probably didn't exist. Loki could supply his own needs, and truly had zero interest in his partner’s wealth. Jorge wondered if that indifference ever bothered Stark, or if he liked it.

Loki (and here’s where things got into strange areas and uncertainties) who appeared quite young, had, at one time, had seven children. Two, according to Loki, had been murdered by his adoptive father, and one was enslaved by him. When he'd asked Loki if his old man was doing time (and after Jorge had explained what “doing time” meant), Loki blinked and shook his head.

“He is a king,” he’d said. “Kings are not imprisoned, whatever their deeds.”

Which statement Jorge never doubted as true— believing Loki was a prince in exile really did turn out to be the easiest thing in the world. There was nothing about Loki that wasn't at least vaguely princely.

An older son, Loki said, lived in London and had been secretly given up for adoption to avoid the fate of his siblings. The remaining three, triplets, lived with Loki and Tony in Stark Tower.

Loki loved children, in a way that was pure and holy and utterly selfless. He would clearly have thrown himself in front of a speeding taxi, bus or subway train to save even his least favorite kid at the Club, if he’d had one, which he completely didn’t. He’d talk to them so kindly and gently it secretly made Jorge want to tear up a little. He played songs for them on a variety of instruments and taught them music and painting. All their grades had skyrocketed since he’d taken over supervising and helping with their homework.

Even the shy ones, the ones who were hurting, would open up to Loki, when they wouldn’t make a peep to anyone else. Which led to the things about Loki that made Jorge’s blood boil—not at Loki himself, certainly not, because Loki was a sweetheart, but because of his circumstances. Jorge worked with kids because he strongly believed every kid deserved a fair shot, that kids should be listened to, nurtured, supported, given good skills to get on in life, and be disciplined only in love, not anger.

He believed in being a positive role model, that no one can do it alone, and it really did take a village. He wasn’t in any way, despite his size, a violent man, but he feared if he ever met Loki’s adoptive father or his elder brother, Baldr, he’d be tempted to throttle them with his bare hands, and the last sight they ever saw, in this life or the next would be his large, angry, brown face looming over them, because Loki might as well have tattooed on his forehead, “I was an abused kid.”

Loki, really had only let the tiniest edges of his past, and that abuse, slip by the careful guard he kept on his words, but even that little bit made Jorge go cold with rage and dismay. He suspected he’d probably immediately lose his lunch if Loki ever told him the whole story.

Here was another weird bit. Jorge got along with all his co-workers and volunteers, he was an affable guy, a good-natured guy, he mixed just fine with all kinds of people. Growing up as a size ginormous half-Mexican/half-Maori kid (that’s America for you!), he’d sometimes been the victim of snap judgments, not to mention stereotypes (nothing quite as scary to some folks as a giant brown man), and he’d found strategies to overcome those situations in a number of positive ways.

He’d dealt with it in other situations, but he hadn’t been exactly pleased at first when he found out he was getting a guy on mandated community service at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. Still, he decided to keep his mouth shut and give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

By the end of the first week he was in love. Not in the way he loved Anita, his beautiful wife and soulmate, but in the way a man loves beautiful art or music. Loki was so talented, as a musician, a writer, a painter, a lover of languages. He was beautiful in the way he spoke of the people in his life, the way he appreciated the world, as if every common thing was new to him, as if kindness was new to him, and deeply, deeply appreciated.

He was funny, nice, gentle, unbelievably smart, and—and Jorge said this as someone who just personally wasn’t wired to be attracted to other guys—just lovely in his physicality, in the movements of his body, his hands, his features, the swing of his long black hair, the flash of his green eyes.

This wasn’t something Jorge was going to repeat, maybe not even to Anita, but he thought Loki might just be magic, not just a prince but actually an enchanted prince from a fairytale world that wasn’t Iceland.

Loki thought Jorge wasn’t watching, but he was. Witness the time little AnaLuisa had the terrible toothache and her mom couldn’t afford the dentist until the check came in on Friday, but Thursday was Loki’s afternoon, and after he touched her jaw the pain was just… gone. Or when Travis tripped and fell on the playground during a game of tag, and his wrist was clearly fractured, then just… wasn’t. Or the day Jorge and Loki had gotten into the discussion of why, even if it was meant for the children’s good, Loki couldn’t just go out and buy them new coats—but that evening when they walked out the door, all the sad, flat, hand-me-down jackets had suddenly become bright and fluffy.

Jorge thought maybe it broke his heart a little bit more, that these kids, some of them not from the best family situations, many of them poor, suddenly had a for-real guardian angel, a fairy godfather who meant them only good. A fairy godfather who just happened to get a horrendous nosebleed every time the magic happened.

Jorge had looked forward to having Loki back after his brief trip to a ridiculous extent, and the kids were over the moon. He’d adjusted Loki’s hours slightly to fit with his new teaching schedule. When Loki had called to check in the day before he’d said all his immigration status stuff was squared away, and he’d unfortunately caught measles while over in the motherland, but had a doctor’s note to say he wasn’t contagious.

“Never mind that, Lok,” Jorge said. “How are you feeling? You must be wiped out.”

“I am well enough,” Loki answered. It was what he always said. He could have been shooting blood out every orifice and would still have said, "I am well.

“There was a… sadness while I was there," Loki continued. "A family loss. To see the children once more will help me to recover my joy.”

“I’m very sorry,” Jorge told him. Loki clearly wasn’t ready to share, so what more could he say? “Keep in mind, whatever you’re up for or not up for, we’ll make it work, my friend, okay?”

“You are all kindness, Supervisor Jorge,” Loki said. “I shall also be truly happy to see you tomorrow.”

In the background, a young girl’s voice yelled, “Soooory!” Clearly Loki’s kids were rambunctiously involved in a board game.

Loki gave a soft laugh, “My younglings are beating my poor brother most wickedly.”

“Give my best to Thor. And, Loki, if you don’t feel up to it, really, don’t feel bad about not coming in. The kids will understand. They care about you.”

“I cannot miss my days, Jorge.” Loki quickly started to sound stressed, almost panicked. “I cannot! Director Coulson has said they will return me to…” He cut himself off abruptly.

Jorge heard him take a long, shuddering breath.

“I am perfectly well, dear friend,” Loki went on, in a controlled, friendly, nicely-modulated (and therefore, completely fake) voice. “I look forward to seeing you greatly.”

“I look forward to seeing you too, Loki. Anita says ‘hi.’”

“Please present my good greetings to her, as well. I will go to bed now, and be rested.” Loki gave a quiet laugh. “My body continues still on Greenwich Mean Time.”

“Sleep well, my friend.” Jorge hung up, and sat staring at the phone.

He was still staring when Anita emerged from the shower in a gust of lavender-scented steam, wearing his very own big navy blue bathrobe and drying her long blonde hair with a coral-colored towel.

It was a funny thing about Anita. People would see her name in print, “Anita Garcia,” or maybe hear her sweet, musical voice, and instantly form a mental image of a petite, curvy Latina with doe eyes and long, dark hair. In truth, Anita (whose maiden name was Anita Ilta Harmaajärvi, meaning “gray lake” in Finnish) was a six-foot two-inch blonde bombshell whose Finnish grandparents had settled in New York and who attended college on a women’s basketball scholarship.

They’d met at a dating club for extremely tall people and instantly bonded over their mutual love of art, books, the theater, volunteering with children, and being able to reach things on top shelves.

If anything, she loved Loki even more than Jorge did, and not merely as his literary representative. Anita was a valiant (there was no other word for her) person. She believed strongly and steadfastly in people and causes. She had no fear in her, no doubt, no hesitation. If she loved you, that love would exist until the end of time, no questions, no retreats.

Loki referred to Anita as his Shield-Sister, and Jorge found that a perfect description. She was his courageous sister, and he was her brilliant, slightly fragile little brother, and she would do anything to make him feel happy and well. It didn’t hurt that Anita loved the written word above all nonliving things, and that she particularly loved Loki’s graceful writing.

“How are the wedding plans going, did he say? Any troubles?”

“Loki didn’t say. He did tell me the immigration stuff was all cleared up, so that’s for the good. He also said he’d caught the measles in London, and that there was a loss in the family while he was over there, too.”

“Oh!” Anita sat down hard on the back of the couch. “Oh, Jorge, you don’t think he…?”

She stopped, biting her lower lip, her face clouded.

“Don’t think he what, An?”

“You don’t think he lost the baby?” she said, softly and very quickly.

Jorge’s jaw dropped. Rapidly, a number of things came into focus in his head, among them: Asgard was a real place; Loki’s adoptive father (the evil bastard) was a real king—not a constitutional monarchy, public relations and ribbon-cutting sort of king, but the absolute dictator, cut-off-your-head-without-a-trial-if-it-pleases-me type; Thor and Loki really were actual princes. Above all, Loki very well might be magic, or at least practicing some sort of science human beings couldn’t even conceive of yet.

Lastly, and most sadly, when Loki described himself as “ _ergi_ ,” he wasn’t really saying he was gay, or effeminate (which he wasn't, really), or even that he was more in touch with his feminine side than most guys. He was saying he was literally, physically, masculine and feminine, that he was intersexed, or his people’s version of intersexed, whatever that was. That he had really carried seven children to life inside his body, that two of them had literally been murdered by his father, one of them literally enslaved, one, child of a man he loved, he been given to others to raise, the only way to keep the little boy safe, and three remained with him, loved by Loki as much as any parent in history had ever loved his children. And those three children, as well as three others, were all the children of violation, at least five of them by a man Loki had once called family.

No wonder Thor insisted on being so protective of his little brother. He was trying to make up for all the times before, when he didn’t, or couldn’t, act to help.

Now, if Anita was right (and Anitam in general, tended not only to be sharp as a tack but unusually perceptive), poor Loki, who loved kids so much, had lost another child. Tony’s child, it must have been.

Jorge’s heart hurt. He put his arms around his wife, and held her, and she held him. “What are you thinking?” he asked Anita at last.

His wife, who thought mostly in books, answered, “Of the ending of _The Catcher in the Rye_. How I want to stand in the tall grass and catch all the children before they can be hurt, and to keep them safe always."

“Even if they’re Asgardian gods?” Jorge asked.

“Maybe especially then,” Anita answered. “Because there’s no one else in all the worlds to protect them.”


	5. One Hand One Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nervous Loki is vetted by the Stark Industries Board of Directors and proves he's still the god of lies--or at least of inventive spin..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Klunnalegur fífl. Óhæfur. Getur þú gert ekkert rétt?_ =Clumsy fool. Incompetent. Can you do nothing right?
> 
>  _Les Fleurs du mal_ ( _The Flowers of Evil_ in English) is a book of French lyric poems, first published in 1857, by Charles Baudelaire. 
> 
> _curriculum vitae_ ="course of life" (Latin) A written summary of a person's education, qualifications, and previous experience--something like a fancier resume
> 
> "Slimy, yet satisfying…" is a quote from _The Lion King_ , in which it refers to grubs and insects rather than to petty revenge.

* * *

Pepper knocked sharply, then poked her head into Tony’s office without waiting for an answer.“I’m just saying,” she said. “T minus one hour and not a peep from upstairs. I just tried calling, too. Equally peepless. Are you ready to do damage control now?” She glanced at his blotter. “Unless you’re too busy building a model of the Eiffel Tower out of binder- and paperclips?”

“You know how he is, Pep,” Tony answered. He’d managed to finally reach the seventeenth level of his feat of paperclip engineering without a wholesale collapse. “He’ll swan in dramatically on the stroke of the hour, looking like the emperor of the universe. Untwist those knickers. Everything will be okey-dokey with Loki.”

Pepper bestowed upon him her look of ultimate pity. “Oh, Tony.”

“Fine.” He climbed grumpily to his feet. “I’m going. I’m gone.”

“Your fiancé,” she called after him, “The piano. All night. In the lobby. Looking like a soul in torment. Again. What is that, every night since you got back?”

Tony started to hear the music while he was still in the elevator, two floors down from the penthouse. Something weird, dreamlike, more-than-slightly inducing of the creeps. The phrase “insanely complicated” honestly went without saying.

On the cello, no less, Loki’s go-to instrument of ultimate despair—oh, gods of the _Ӕsir_ , that was so not a good sign. Worse yet was Loki muttering to himself in SpaceViking as he played.

 _“Klunnalegur fífl. Óhæfur. Getur þú gert ekkert rétt?_ ” Loki asked himself viciously, as he sawed away at the instrument with slow, precise, yet somehow savage, intensity.

Tony shut the door behind him, hopefully with just enough force to alert Mr. Bat Ears that he was no longer alone in the penthouse, but not enough to startle him. So much for good intentions—a brain-splitting jangle of strings came from the cello, and the bow flew through the air, landing upright between two couch cushions.

“Wow,” Tony said mildly. “Dramatic ending!”

Loki’s cello lay face down on the floor. Loki himself slumped in one of the dining chairs, knees a mile apart and both hands covering his face.”

“I cannot, Tony. I cannot. I cannot,” he said, shaking.

“That was a cool piece,” Tony said, as if oblivious. “Kinda dreamy-creepy. What’s it called?”

After a few more moments of meltdown, Loki fell for his trap. “’ _Tout un Monde Lointain._..’ by Henri Dutilleux. It was inspired by the poems ‘ _Les Fleurs du Mal,_ ’ by Charles Baudelaire.”

“Coolness. Since we’re heading off to Paris soon, let me try out my terrible French on you. ‘ _Tout_ ’ is ‘all’, right?”

“Yes,” Loki answered. His hands came down, lying open in his lap, red crescent-marks from his nails all over the palms, fingers blistered like fuck. How long had he been playing, anyway? “Only, in this case, ‘whole’.”

“’Whole, not ‘all’. Got it. ‘ _Un monde_ ’ I do know. That’s ‘a world.’”

“Precisely.”

“ _’Lointain_ ’, though? Not a clue. A ‘mountain of loins’?”

Loki actually laughed at that one. “You are foolish, belovéd, and I am, also, greatly affronted by your pronunciation. The correct translation is ‘distant.’ ‘A whole distant world’—what is meant is the world of dreams.”

Tony cupped his fiancé’s tear-streaked face between his palms. Gods, tear-streaked, still burning hot--and he smelled vaguely pukey, too. Plus, the cello. His poor baby.

He felt like the devil.

Worse than the devil, maybe, because he’d always known the person he married would have to go through this malarkey. Or should he say ‘bullshit’? No, call it what it really was: an uncaring, wholesale disregard of Loki’s right to privacy and their rights as a couple to have everything between them remain… between them. The Board called it a “vetting”--the interrogation, the presentation before the board and major shareholders, the letters of recommendation, the (may the powers of science and rationality help them both) proof of fecundity.

Fecundity, for fuck’s sake. Like he was some sort of medieval king ensuring his dynasty, or a prize stallion being put to a questionable brood-mare.

Uh, well, yeah. Basically. Not that Loki was in any way questionable, as far as he was concerned. And to lure and sweet-talk his poor honey into it now, of all times, with the shape he was in…?

The Devil, if he existed, would probably look down his nose at Tony for being such a creep. Tony couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. Not to Loki.

“Look, if this is all too much, babe, say the word, please.” Tony smoothed back Loki’s hair, which was all over everywhere in a black cloud of craziness. “Pretty please. I mean it. If any of it is too much, up to and including the wedding itself. We can postpone, or we can grab the kids, Thor, Kurt, Logan, Happy, Pep, Jorge and Mrs. Jorge…”

“Anita,” Loki said faintly.

“Sure. Anita. We can have it over within half an hour, and to hell with the Board of Directors. I swear, I’ll go on a one-person strike. Let them just see how well the company does without new tech from yours truly. What I don’t want is you making your sweet self sick with stress. Only… too late, huh?”

Loki leaned forward, pressing his face to Tony’s belly, wrapping both arms around him tightly. “Because I do love you, my strength, _hjarta hjarta minn,_ I can show courage. Tony, truly, I can and I shall. I will be brave because you wish me to be so.”

As if Loki hadn’t already shown that in his life, over and over and over.

“Lok, my sweetest sweetheart, I swear you aren’t even so much a god of mischief as you are a god of courage. Do you get that, baby? Do you know how much I love you, wonderful role-model and _Pabbi of my children? Now whaddya say we catch a shower together, complete with some naughty touching as a little tension-reliever, then make ourselves pretty?”_

 

“ _Nornir_ , I have wasted much time, is there…?” Loki threw a look at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Ah, _Nornir_ , Tony…!”

Tony could practically hear his fiancé’s panic-levels start to spike again.

“There’s time.” Tony pulled him to his feet, walking backward. “My engineering skills make me a highly efficient naughty-toucher, especially with such appealing incentive for my naughtiness.”

Loki, wide-eyed, didn’t even appear to have heard him.

* * *

Tony honestly had to hand it to his fiancé—from total nervous breakdown (with cello accompaniment, no less) to Emperor of the Universe (complete with excellent hair) in under forty minutes. It was nothing short of miraculous.

Which, more or less, described Loki in general. Although Tony knew his fiancé hadn’t actually grown taller, he still somehow managed to look as if he had, in more than even his usual perfect-postured, utterly poised and superhumanly graceful respects. Add to that what may well have been the world’s most classy-looking suit (dark gray, supremely well-tailored, paired with a rich burgundy tie and just-barely-lighter-gray shirt) and he looked sleek, slender and slightly dangerous to know. As mentioned, he’d done his long hair, that less than half an hour before had been the storm cloud of doom and despair, into what he said was an light-elf style, a complex network of thin, flat, interconnected braids leading into one thick one at the back, that somehow managed to look both devastatingly stylish and totally masculine.

He’d even modified his usual handshake into something less than “You may kiss my ring,” yet somehow so very much more than a simple business greeting.

 _I am a prince_ , that handshake said, looking down its figurative nose. _I am your superior in every conceivable way. Any word you should speak against me lowers you and elevates me._

Pepper let Loki lord his way around three-quarters the room before she called the meeting and the board members and major shareholders began to take seats. At each place at the boardroom table was a handsome charcoal gray portfolio embossed in maroon and silver (nary a trace of Loki-green, black or gold anywhere, as promised), Loki’s _curriculum vitae_. Supposedly.

Powers of logic and reason (or at least of plausible and accomplished lying) defend us, Tony prayed silently. Although the board-members and majority shareholders had received advance copies for their perusal at the start of the day, he himself was flying blind. Loki had refused to give him even a peek at what he’d been power-writing for the last four days--in-between work, volunteer work, and meetings--hadn’t even let him help with the e-mails or the numerous multinational (and multilingual) phone calls.

Each page in the stack had seemed to add a few more degrees of heat to the process of Loki’s meltdown.

Only a handful of days back in the states and the wound in Loki's back, from John Watson’s impromptu surgery, looked gross, he only slept in brief, exhausted collapses, and he couldn’t tolerate anything but the blandest of bland liquids, if that, much to their family cook, Mrs. Ransome’s, distress.

Loki also (hell of an actor that he was) managed to appear cheerful, pleasant, charming with the kids, his brother, Mrs. R. and his co-workers, but avoided everyone else, even his best friends, Kurt and Pepper. Even more troubling, he’d actually passed out cold two day’s previous during his check-in with Director, making the ever-calm Phil nearly freak out over the phone to his boyfriend Clint concerning the six feet two inches of insensible god decorating his slightly-better-than-usual government-gray office carpet.

Fortunately, Clint (about whom there had been interesting revelations) not only had the presence of mind to alert Thor, he actually drove the thunder god over to S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and helped him wrangle his still-extremely-wobbly brother home. Full points to House Barton.

Supervisor Jorge at the Lower East Side Boys’ and Girls’ Club, where Loki did his S.H.I.E.L.D.-mandated community service, had taken one look yesterday and become so concerned about Loki’s health that he wouldn’t allow him to do anything but curl up on the hideous-but-comfy couch and read to the kids or help with their homework, to whatever extent he was able.

Tony thought maybe he was a little in love with Supervisor Jorge at this point.

Eight days had passed since Wales, the cavern, the dragons, the death of their so-much-wanted little boy.

Eight days since John Watson performed that surgery on Loki atop an Iron Age altar half a mile underground.

Five days later Loki started his professorship, and the same day, they’d received news the vetting was scheduled, a done deal, not open to change or debate.

And five days left to go before their wedding.

Their wedding planner kept taking Loki’s hand and patting it maternally while looking at him with moist cocker spaniel eyes, promising him the most beautiful ceremony that ever had been was, fully convinced that his total collapse, or demise, or something, was imminent.

That Tony’s tailor of the past decade, Mr. Christobal, had suffered a sudden spasm of homophobic insanity and decided to wreck his excellent Hugo Boss tuxedo was just another nail in the coffin of his peace of mind. At least Hugo Boss 2 had been delivered safely into the hands of Loki’s guy, Mr. Pierre, and Mr. Pierre, Tony knew, was a rockstar (or the Loki equivalent). Witness his fiancé’s daily appearance.

Tony himself felt like a complete wreck and he was in the pink of health.

Yet here they were.

Pepper took the head of the table, looking not exactly nervous, but nervous-ish for Pep, who normally had (also figurative) balls of steel.

Tony sat at the foot, wishing he could simultaneously be sucking down a triple Glenmorangie and chewing his nails to the quick, instead of lounging in his chair in typical semi-bored and above-it-all Tony Stark style. Loki occupied the chair to his right, not exactly lounging, but almost ostentatiously relaxed, like a white tiger at rest—one that was more than ordinarily pleased with itself.

Tony had expected Pep to open the meeting, but Loki rose instead. “Ladies,” he almost purred, with a slight bow to the right side of the table, “And gentlemen. I greet you. Some of you I have already had the pleasure of meeting, all of you I hope to know better in days to come. My name is Sigvarðr Loki Wyllt Friggason, son of Myrddin Wyllt and Lowell Friggason, the well-known painter and hero of the Second World War, winner of the Victoria Cross. I am godson to Elizabeth the Second, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. If you would be so kind as to open the packets before you, you will observe my godmother’s testimonial…”

 _Fuck, Lok,_ Tony thought, _That’s an interesting piece of mischief you’re making_. In a way,pilfering pieces of Sherlock’s history for his own made sense, far easier to tweak an existing paper trail than to make one up entirely. The godmother thing came out of the blue, but Loki had mentioned some long-standing friendliness between himself and his monarch.

Tony opened his packet, flipping a couple pages. Yup there it was, royal language, seals and everything. It was either real, or Loki had a brilliant career ahead of him as a forger.

“…and also my _Konunglegur Ӕttingjar_ ,” Loki was saying.

“That would be royal relatives,” Pepper put in. “Or royal cousins, isn’t that correct, Loki?”

“I thank you, Lady Virginia.” Loki bowed slightly, with a smile, in her direction. “Yes, my Most Royal Cousins, Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, Harald V, King of Norway, Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark, Philippe, King of Belgium, and Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. You  
will also see a missive from my dear friend, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, current President of Iceland, along with his honored predecessor, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, incidentally the first woman to serve as President of any nation. In regards to my employment, though it is as yet fairly recent, I have included testimonials from Mr. John Sexton, President of New York University, my Department Head, Dr. Helen Layton, Professor of Linguistics, Ms. Linda K. Zecher, CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers of my first book, Mr. Richard Robinson, CEO of Scholastic Corporation, publishers of my second book, Mr. Wiremu Bock, owner of the Oakhurst Gallery where I exhibit my paintings and sculptures, and Mrs. Dara Franzese, Wife unto The Honorable Frank Franzese, Mayor of New York. It is my sincere hope that these testimonials will help to establish my bona fides with your worthy selves.”

Actually, to Tony, it looked as if the major title-bomb Loki  had just dropped on them, accompanied by the explosion of official seals (even color-printed they were impressive) and heavy-hitter signatures, had nearly finished them off, rendering further questioning impossible.

Doubt me not, Loki’s voice said in his head. _All real. All official. And, if not my godmother,_ _Elizabeth is my patron and friend, who loves me as she is able to love few others, for I knew her when she was young and merry, and gave to her a gift of mischief to carry ever after. I have my ways of being useful, which in turn gain to me loyalty and trust. We are also, all of us, truly relations, though you may not like that story so well._

The contact cut off abruptly. Loki turned on the table a slightly predatory, yet almost alarmingly charming smile. “My names, I know, can be a mouthful. Tony and my friends call me Loki. I would be honored…” A graceful hand went over his heart, and his eyes twinkled. “If you were to do the same. It is, for me, a term of affection. Some of you may recall, in the ancient myths of my forebearers, Loki was the god of mischief. I was, as I well remember, quite a mischievous child, and more than earned my second name.”

He even got a laugh out of some of them with that one.

Sam Torgern, board member and official pain in Tony’s ass, was not among them. Trust him not to be dazzled by the Loki charm.

“You mention ancient mythology, Mr. Friggason, but New York has memories of a person by that name that are still quite fresh, and far from amusing.”

Loki’s smile, that time, was gentle and a little sad. “Ah, yes. I lived in distant Iceland at the time and heard of those events only by news report, but I well understand that the memories would be bitter. Please, then, feel free to call me by my given name, Sigvarðr, if that is more comfortable, or Mr. Friggason, if you will. I certainly wish for no awkwardness between us.”

“The question is not so much of your name, Mr. Friggason, as the fact that you look exactly like the bastard who wrecked half our city. Would you care to explain the connection between you and the so-called Loki of Asgard?”

Loki’s expressions of shock, followed by disbelief, followed by injured innocence, really were Oscar-worthy.

“Tony, did not our dear friend, Prince Thor Odinson, tell us that his brother had, in remorse for his earlier misdeeds, perished defending him and his Lady Jane upon the plains of a distant world? Did I imagine hearing such a story? Does he not still carry sadness within him for those events?”

“Yup, that’s what I heard, Lok. And you know Thor. He’s not exactly the type to fib.”

Loki looked pensive. “Of course, I have not known Prince Thor so long as you have, belovéd, yet he has always seemed to me a man of probity and honor. I’ve never, that I know of, heard him tell a falsehood of even the smallest sort.”

“No one is questioning Mr. Odinson’s truthfulness. What I want to know—what we want to know--is why you look exactly like the bastard.”

Loki gave a sudden merry laugh, eyes crinkling in the most charming way possible. “Forgive me, please, I do not laugh at that terrible man, or at the sufferings of your poor city. It’s only that—do any of you remember that quite unseasonably warm day, nearly like summer—oh, it must have been in February—two years ago? I had just relocated to London with my children, but was in the city to help arrange a retrospective of my father’s and my own work at the MoMA. I was staying at the Hilton Midtown and had just popped into Starbucks for a cup of tea before trotting off to the museum, when I realized I hadn’t seen the sun for days. I then noticed, owing to the unseasonable weather, that tables had been placed outdoors, and decided to take a seat at one. I was just making myself comfortable when a furious voice shouted at me, “Who do you think you are, you bastard!” and I received the whole of an extremely hot Venti Americano full in the face. Dripping and spluttering, I jumped to my feet…”

Leap in now, _hjarta minn,_ Loki’s voice said in Tony’s head.

Tony chuckled, mock calm, mock amused. “At which point I realized I’d just coffee-showered a total stranger maybe seven years younger, three inches shorter, with green eyes not blue eyes, and crazy curly hair instead of straight, who very clearly was not my arch-nemesis, Loki of Asgard.”

“I am, instead, Loki of London,” Loki put in, smiling at him fondly. “Or perhaps Loki of Reykjavik, where I spent my childhood, though I am a British citizen and received my education at Oxford and Cambridge.”

“Speaking of which, while I’m thinking of it, I don’t want Loki to have to give up his citizenship,” Tony said. “It’s part of his identity, and important to him. As he’s independently wealthy and also possesses outstanding academic and artistic skills, there’s no impediment to his staying in this country as long as he likes, our attorneys say. As some of you may know, we recently made a trip to make sure everything was in order. After the wedding we’ll finalize the children’s adoption and they’ll hold dual U.S./British citizenship."

“As for the end of how we met,” Loki went on, grinning. “I couldn’t get rid of him! He followed me back to my hotel when I returned there to change and rinse the black coffee out of my hair, apologizing all the way and giving me Labrador retriever-eyes.”

“I was smitten.” Tony leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Instantly! I mean, look at this guy! Gorgeous, a total sweetheart, didn’t even get mad at me about the coffee shower, even smarter than me—and you guys know I don’t say that easily—snappy dresser. Way too good for the likes of me, really, yet here we are.”

That time, the smile Loki gave him was genuine. “Tony, you and my children are everything to me. If I had nothing else in all the world, yet I would have everything. Even that first time, when we met, I ought to have been annoyed, perhaps, but I was not. I could not be. Nearly every moment I remained in New York we were together, talking, laughing. He showed me his inventions, I showed him my paintings. I was the happiest I had been in my life. I returned to London knowing I’d have to make a choice. In the end, it was an easy one. The children and I determined to return to New York, to put down roots here, unite our house with Tony’s and be a family.

“Sadly, the children’s father did not agree. Understand, this was a man who had no claim over my life or affections—far from it!--or over the children’s lives. He was a distant connection of my family, much older, who had assaulted me, I regret to say, repeatedly, from an early age. When I was yet quite young I quickened with child. My triplets, my beautiful and most-beloved sons and daughter were the result. I have never regretted an instant of their presence in my life.

"Unfortunately, Baldr laid claim to that over which he had no right. He followed us to New York and, on a day I’d taken the children to the park, attacked us. By fortune, Hela and Jöri were able to run to safety. Fen, my fierce little one, refused to leave, even by my command…” Loki subsided into his seat, face turned toward the window. “Oh, Tony, I fear… I can't...”

“Fen was in a coma for several days,” Tony said somberly. “There was damage, but he’s doing great now. Leaps and bounds, his therapists say. Loki… Let’s just say that bastard left him for dead, but he’s been a fighter.”

Tony reached across the table to squeeze his fiancé’s hand, feeling him tremble even from this edited version of the story. “It’s been really hard, guys. Like I said, Loki’s been a fighter, but he’s still not all the way there yet. He’s provided, in writing, everything you could possibly want from him, right down to how his plumbing works and an affidavit from his doctor confirming fecundity. Not that that should even matter, because I’ve already had paperwork drawn up confirming my soon-to-be-son Jöri as my heir. His sister Hela is also perfectly capable, but seems more inclined toward the arts, like her _Pabbi_ , than engineering. Let me tell you, this is one wicked smart kid, more than capable of carrying on the Stark legacy. Oh, and we’re raising our children to be cooperative, not competitive, so any Lok and I have together will just be the icing on the cake. We all work together for the good of the family, and also the good of the company. This marriage is happening. If you haven’t R.S.V.P.’d, you might want to get on that. The wedding’s on Saturday. Hope you all can attend.”

“Page twenty-eight, Mr. Torgern,” Loki put in suddenly and icily. “The diagrams and notations are quite complete, and I’ve no doubt you possess sufficient reading skills to follow them. I have no intention of discussing them further in company.” He rose, towering over everyone. “My children are a great joy to me, however they were conceived. To be as I am has not always brought me such happiness, and I will not go into it here or with anyone save my husband and my physician. You have brought me here, ostensibly, to vet me, not to shame me. I have given you testimonials as to character, employment, income, immigration status, identity and fertility. I will marry Anthony in love, live with him in trust and fidelity, honor and uphold him always, and nurture his children with the utmost affection and care. What more needs to be said?”

“Hear, hear!” Pepper exclaimed, popping to her feet. “Now, if you’d like to repair to the ballroom, I have word the caterers have finished setting up, we have some musical entertainment, and the children should just be getting out of school, so we’ll be seeing them shortly.”

A few of the board members, Torgern especially, looked like they wanted to argue, but nobody could coerce a group of cranky people into doing exactly what she wanted, when she wanted, like Pepper. It was her superpower.

The room looked amazing. The buffet looked amazing—except for the presence of the ice sculpture. In the shape of a fucking Viking ship.

Tony came within about one second of totally breaking down sobbing, losing his shit, except that Loki’s arm was firm and warm around his shoulders, holding him, steering him away.

“W-w-why?” he stammered out, when Loki had him in a fairly secluded corner. “Why would they do that? Why?”

“It means nothing,” Loki soothed, holding Tony close. “A tribute to my heritage, I expect, nothing more. No harm meant by it. And see…” Loki took the trim maroon pocket square from his jacket. “You see? It is no more.”

Tony looked. The Viking ship had become a swan, wings unfurled. A couple board-members did double-takes, clearly doubting both their sight and memories, but no one else seemed troubled.

“Ta-daa!” Loki breathed in his ear.

At that point the Childlike Empress, brothers in tow, made her appearance. The boys had nice suits, in slightly different shades of gray—Tony detected the work of the inestimable Mr. Pierre. Hela looked like a fucking cupcake, her skin pinked up for the occasion, dressed in the frilliest of frilly white dresses. His sense of humor suddenly returned to him, brought back by the sudden swan and Empress Cupcake.

Only Hela could wear a little girl party dress ironically. For the gods’ sake, she even had a tiny tiara perched atop her curls.

 _I’m glad you appreciate my efforts_ , said her dry mental voice in Tony’s head.

It hit him that someday Hela, his very own little Hela, would rule Asgard. It was practically a foregone conclusion. She was, after all, the eldest  Odin’s grandchildren.

He also realized that the day his Childlike Empress decided it was time to throw her grandfather either a retirement party or under the proverbial bus, Odin had better hold on to his fucking eyepatch.

Hela gave him a gentle smile that was, at the same time, somewhat chilling. “The ones I love have nothing to fear from me. The ones I hate… Hmn…"

Loki draped an arm around her shoulders. Their two sets of emerald eyes, completely unreadable for the moment, met.

Across the room, Sam Torgern’s Bloody Mary exploded all over the front of his pale blue shirt.

Mrs. Torgern (Martha, Tony remembered) dabbed ineffectively at the mess with handfuls of cocktail napkins—until Torgern, with a curse, slapped her hands away and stomped out of the ballroom.

A small, collective gasp moved through those standing near.

 _Ah, the pleasure of petty mischief…_ Loki sent.

 _Slimy, yet satisfying_ … Hela chimed in.

Hand-in-hand, they glided to Martha Torgern’s rescue. Hela’s curtsey, when introduced, was worthy of a prima ballerina.

Fen’s hand slipped into Tony’s right hand. He looked so cute in his little gray suit, with his small earnest face and spiky hair, Tony could hardly stand it. Jöri, who’d one day be tall and elegant like his _Pabbi_ , appeared every inch the young prince, pale and silver-haired, without a trace of inner eyelids, charming blue tongue, or scales.

Tony thought suddenly of Kurt, with his image inducer that he scarcely ever used, and wondered where the young mutant found the sheer bloody guts to move so boldly through the hating, judging world.

He’d even asked Kurt that question once.

“Logan,” his friend answered simply. “He taught me to be honest. He taught me to live without fear."

Tony suddenly felt like crap again. What was he teaching his beautiful, lovable family?

The opposite of Logan’s lessons, really: that they had to lie, and lie again, to fit into his world. That even their faces, loved and lovely as they might be to him, could never be acceptable to others.

Trouble not yourself, came Loki’s gentle mind-touch. _You are correct in this. I cannot ever be forgiven for what I have done, and the children and I cannot be as we are, monsters in your world._

 _Oh, Loki_ , Tony thought. _Don’t say that. Please. Don’t ever._

 _I am very weary_ , Loki sent back as, across the room, he smiled charmingly and shook a shareholder’s hand. _I shall have the children sing, and then I hope, soon, we may end this charade._

He must have cued Hela, because Empress Cupcake wafted over to the grand piano, where a middle-aged pianist in a modest black dress had the thankless task of grinding out soft-jazz favorites at low volume as ambient noise. When Hela touched her arm she beat a hasty retreat, probably to catch a much-needed potty-break and a drink.

Fen hopped up onto the piano bench, grinning from ear to ear. The few people watching smiled indulgently, probably expecting a stirring rendition of _I’m a Little Teapot_ , or _The Eensy-Weensy Spider,_ played with no more than two of Fen's small, chubby fingers.

Instead they got Hela’s controlled  _Valkyja_ voice, carrying through the ballroom, halting all conversation.

“My brothers and I have prepared two songs for you," she announced. "We hope very much that you will enjoy them. The first is ‘ _La Nuit_ ,’ by composer Ernest Chausson. The second is ‘ _One Hand One Heart_ ,’ from _West Side Story_ , by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.”

Tony moved toward Loki, slipping his arm around his fiancé’s waist, as Loki’s arm circled his shoulders.

Fen’s little hands moved smoothly over the keys, calling forth with perfect skill music that was nuanced, dreamlike, as his brother’s and sister’s voices soared above the piano's deeper voice, Hela’s cut-crystal soprano flying at the highest notes, Jöri's richer tone warming and supporting hers, making something together nearly alien in its beauty.

But it was Fen who really got to him, who made Tony press his face for a moment into Loki’s exquisitely-coated chest. Their little boy… Their brave little boy who couldn’t bathe himself, or talk…

He had a voice. Loki had given him a voice.

“ _Make of our lives one life_ ,” the children sang, as Loki pulled away just a little, bending down to kiss him, with all the fire in his fiercely passionate heart.

 _Day after day, one life._  
_Now it begins, now we start_  
_One hand, one heart,_  
_Even death won't part us now..._

The piano went silent. For a minute the room was pretty damn silent too, and then a roar of applause broke out.

Loki and Tony moved to the instrument, kissing each of the children in turn, gathering them up like hens gathering their chicks.

“And now, regretfully,” Loki said, actually managing to sound regretful. “I feel we must bid you adieu. Our children are young. They have homework, supper, bathtimes and bed. I thank you with my whole heart for this warm welcome. Blessings on you.”

“We hope to see you at the wedding,” Tony chimed in. “Goodnight to all!”


	6. The Sweetness Follows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-board meeting domestic sweetness with Tony and Loki (with a touch of foreshadowing, to make the future installment, _Xenophobia_ just that much more ouchy--it gives me the creeps to think of J.A.R.V.I.S. listening in to all this!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Highway to Hell” is arguably the best-known song from one of Tony’s favorite bands, AC/DC.
> 
> In my home town a “meat lovers” pizza would include ground beef, bacon, sausage and pepperoni. No vegetables need apply. Hela’s favorite, locally known as a “Frog Rock” is the one I always order. I draw a firm line at arugula (rocket) on pizza.
> 
> I have no idea why half the world calls pug dogs “pugs” and the other half calls them  
> “mops” or “mopsis,” but so it is. About five years ago my daughter dressed my pug, Wilbur, as Capt. Jack Sparrow for Halloween. The resulting photo may well be the funniest damn thing I have ever seen. No more deeply offended expression, Grumpy Cat included, has ever been witnessed on the face of human or animal.
> 
> The marvelously-named Foxhall Dangerfield, his sister Henderson, and Henderson’s husband Attila Norman were actual people. I met Henderson (who was actually born during the U.S. Civil War), when she was 105 years old and I was a small child, and by strange routes ended up with the entire Foxhall Dangerfield literary collection upon her passing. Mr. Dangerfield was a man whose prose was so very purple it makes Bulwer Lytton seem like Hemingway. The thought of Loki declaiming his works fills me with unholy glee, as does the thought of Loki and his... um... unique perspective on the internet.

* * *

Loki leaned against the back wall of the elevator, his eyes closed, the kids pressed up tightly against him, Fen holding firmly to his _Pabbi’s_ slender leg. “Oh, my much-loved younglings,” he said, just before they reached the penthouse. “I know boundless pride in you. How beautifully you performed this afternoon!”

Tony had a feeling he didn’t just mean the music, especially as Hela’s skin went back to white, and the inner lids flicked momentarily across Jöri’s eyes.

“I bet I know some pretty amazing younglings who want pizza for dinner,” he remarked, slipping his arm around Loki’s waist. After a brief flinch, Loki leaned into him, his cheek resting against the top of Tony’s head. The kids’ eyes lighted up. Even sophisticated Hela thoroughly approved of pizza, though her favorite featured pesto instead of red sauce, artichoke hearts, black olives, mushrooms, a smattering of sun-dried tomatoes and extra pine nuts with fresh mozzarella. By the time she was ten it would probably be arugula, goat cheese and marinated walnuts. Like Tony, the boys favored Meat Lovers. With meat. And extra cheese, just to up the cholesterol ante.

The elevator doors slid open and the kids erupted out, Tony and Loki following a little more slowly.

“Forget not to hang your raiment,” Loki called after them, though his heart didn’t sound completely in the reminder. Tony understood completely.

“Hey, you know, there’s someone I feel boundless pride in,” he said, steering his fiancé into the bedroom.”

“It will all withstand scrutiny,” Loki said dully. “I made certain.” He sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, pressing his fingertips against his closed eyes.

Tony tugged at his own deliberately-obnoxious purple tie, then pulled it over his head still tied. “I think you know that’s not what I meant, babe. You were gorgeous in every way.” He moved closer to the bed to help Loki out of his jacket. “You charmed their fucking socks off. Or maybe I mean intimidated. Actually, I think I mean a totally kickass combination of both.”

“That one. That Torgern. He liked me not.” Loki made an attempt at untying his own tie, but his hands were shaking too badly. Tony got that for him too.

“Correction, sweetie, he likes _me_ not, which is why I named your mud-monster after him. Anyone I’d brought to that meeting would have gotten the same reception, or worse. Honestly, on the whole, I think he reacted to you pretty well. As you probably noticed from the way he treated his poor wife, that was by no means Sam Torgern’s most unpleasant flavor. Remind me to compliment Miss Hela on the exploding cocktail, by the way. That was a nice touch. I do enjoy a spot of petty revenge, now and then, and I’m so glad ol’ Sam drinks Bloody Marys instead of vodka straight up.”

Though he gave a quick grin at the memory, Loki seemed neither particularly amused nor reassured. He flopped back on the bed, exhaustion and pain in every line of his long, thin body. “No doubt he impatiently awaits the opening of business hours in Europe, in order to question my veracity.”

“Yeah? And what happens then, Lok?”

A more lasting grin spread across his fiancé’s face, one that was purely, absolutely, fiendishly, joyfully Loki. “Foolish common man, how dare you impugn the reputation of his majesty’s most beloved and royal cousin, Loki Wyllt Friggason?’”

“Wow. Impugn, no less. And royal! You honestly did come across as totally royal, babe—like you had a shitload of titles but were just too classy to use them here in the Land of the Free. Let me guess, you have something really, really juicy on the Crowned Heads of Europe?”

“I stoop not to blackmail, Tony.” Loki appeared to think for a minute, as if considering how to say what he intended to say. Finally, he came up with, “Monarchs no longer claim to rule by divine right.” Slowly, he kicked off his shoes. “They did, once.”

“I think I remember something about that.” Tony hung up his vest and jacket, then on second thought, pulled them off the hanger and stuffed them in the bag for the cleaners, adding his pants a second later. Even his clothes smelled like extreme nervousness.

He didn’t have the energy, right then, to ask his fiancé to explain what he’d meant by his last statement.

God, he needed a shower.

“J.A.R.V.I.S.,” Tony said, not even thinking. “Pizza for all, please? The usual suspects?”

“I trust everything went well today, sir?” the A.I. answered. He sounded a little off, maybe with a little touch of extra snark added to his usual snark, but Tony didn’t pay that much attention. “We should anticipate no delay to your nuptials?”

“Couldn’t have gone better, J.!” Tony answered cheerfully.

Loki, he noticed, had rolled over onto his side, back to him, legs pulled up. Well, if anyone deserved a power nap, it was his sweetie, after the day he’d had. Tony soccer-kicked his shoes in the direction of the closet, grabbed his robe and padded in sock-feet into the bathroom.

When he emerged, feeling 100% fresher, filled with energy, and obnoxiously cheerful, Loki, once more seated on the side of the bed, had changed into black leggings and one of Thor’s faded oversized t-shirts. This one featured an monumentally offended-looking fawn pug dressed like Jack Sparrow, complete with beaded dreadlocks. Tony honestly wondered where Thor bought the things, and what made Loki, usually so particular about his wardrobe, so completely willing to wear them.

Hum-singing “ _Highway to Hell_ ,” complete with improvised instrumental parts (because who, even a devoted metalhead like himself, knew more of the words to “ _Highway to Hell_ ” than “ _I’m on a high_ \--drum smash- _-way to hell!_ ”), Tony pulled on sweat-pants and a Metallica t-shirt.

He sat beside Loki to put on his warm, woolly socks, bumping his shoulder lightly against his fiancé’s. “Maybe try to be just a little happy, Lok? We got through this after all, right? With relatively little blood spilled? Some might even be so bold as to say, ‘With flying colors.’ So only four days now and you’re Mr. Loki Stark, undeniably gorgeous and talented husband of Mr. Anthony Stark, brilliant (if I say so myself) man of business and inventor. That’s pretty damn cool, right?”

Loki summoned up a slightly wavery smile from somewhere. “Yes, it is damn cool…” (even Loki’s cussing sounded classy), “As you say, though not all may think so.” He appeared to give the wall a sudden fierce glare. “If I wanted it less than I do, I should have been unable to summon the stomach to get through this terrible day.”

There was a compliment in there somewhere, and Tony decided he’d go with it. “You know I want it too, Lok. More than anything I’ve ever wanted and, trust me, I’ve wanted a lot of stuff. Though here in New York we usually say ‘balls’ instead of ‘stomach’. It’s slightly lessShakespearean. Not that there’s anything wrong with Shakespearean.”

“Do you?” A firmer, almost teasing smile, and Loki’s arms went around him, holding Tony close. “How… earthy.”

“Earthy, that’s me.” Not thinking, he snaked an arm around Loki’s back, managing to touch exactly the wrong spot, so that Loki gave a sharp gasp and folded right over his lap.

“Disregard me, please,” he gritted out in a soft, tight voice. “Disregard me, Tony. One moment only. ‘Tis nothing, belovéd.”

“No, baby, in the words of those great poets and songsters, Hall and Oates, ‘ _I can’t go for that, no can do_ ’.”

“That is appalling grammar,” Loki said faintly, into Tony’s sweatpants-covered thighs.

“It’s idiom. You taught me that word. The voice of the people, my darling.” He raised Loki from his lap as gently as he could. He would never understand how someone so damn skinny could also be so fucking heavy. “Yup, up you get. Now lie down on your tummy. I want to pull up your Grumpy Pug shirt and check out what nastiness is going on with your incision.”

“All is well with my incision, and the most-amusing creature upon my shirt is a mopsi.” Despite his mild attack of the stubborns, Loki actually stretched out on his stomach, adding into the pillow, “I enjoy to look upon the foolish small faces of mopsis. This one wears upon him the garments of Captain Jack Sparrow.”

“That he does, babe.” Smiling, Tony shook his head, rubbing a hand gently over Loki’s t-shirted shoulders to relax him before he went in for the kill. “Do you have a Pinterest board of uh… mopsis?” He was going to have to look. He was so going to have to look. What he knew of Loki and social media was already a thing of wonder and strangeness. Even the Tweets that came sailing through from “The Real Lo Stark” (one million followers and counting) weren’t so much Tweets in the conventional sense as they were indescribably lovely playing card-sized paintings and tiny, incandescent poems.

“It is foolish and… and _ergi_ , I know. In Asgard we have books that have motion, portraying the action of a history. We have carvings, tapestries—many of them magical in their properties. We have poems of divers kinds, including the Great Sagas, celebrating our… their… past. We have wondrous workings in metal and stone, yet we have not paintings such as I have made, or fictions as of the fictions of my late working. We have not photographs to capture and depict brief moments in time, or films, or things meant merely to amuse or gladden. Even ere I came here, Tony, was my head filled with all these things. I delighted to laugh, yet the crude jests of warriors brought to me no mirth. I was allowed to create things of use, even to make them pleasant to the eye if I would, for that is the way of Asgard, but never might I make merely for the joy of the making, to relieve the vast universe of thought that ever whirls within my mind.”

Loki had completely tensed up again, so Tony rubbed his back a little longer, thinking of his Loki in a place where his magic, his imagination, his gorgeous creativity, meant less than nothing. Where he was dismissively, insultingly, called “ _ergi_ ” instead of “brilliant.” Even without the nonstop abuse from his sadistic, conniving dad and repulsive big bro Baldr, that life would have been soul-destroying for someone with Loki’s spirit. He’d been crushed into the earth when he was meant to soar.

“You are so goddamn beautiful, Lok,” Tony said softly. “Everything about you, from the tips of your uniquely gorgeous toes all the way up to that giant, fantastic brain of yours, with stops along the way for your more-than-shapely ass and your big, warm, endlessly-loving heart. You are so precious to me, babe. You are so damn precious to me.” He bent low, kissing Loki’s upturned cheek, murmuring in his ear, “Won’t you be good to yourself, baby, and love yourself at least a little, for me?”

“Tony, I have thought…” Loki began, sounding unusually shy.

“Yes, my love?” Tony ran his fingers through Loki’s long curly hair (wilder and wavier than ever now Loki had taken out all those braids), being extremely careful not to pull the fine, clinging strands.

“Your workshop is your realm, this I know, yet if I desired to make again a useful thing, might I be allowed to put to use of some of the tools? Not the delicate devices of electronical nature, which might be injured by my _seiðr_ , only the rude mechanical ones that I could not hurt. Would you help me also to find the materials I need for my manufacture? They cannot be purchased from Amazon, I have discovered. I know not the ways of such things.”

Ah, Loki and his Amazonian love affair. Loki adored a good bookstore, particularly a bookstore with used or antique books, and haunted several local shops regularly (his latest find being a series of luridly illustrated Gothic romances by a Victorian writer with the unlikely name of Foxhall Dangerfield, brother—Loki informed him—of literary critic and translator Henderson Dangerfield Norman, who was married to a man named Attila. Loki loved to read passages aloud, as dramatically (yet oddly, with love, as only Loki could) as possible—which was pretty damn dramatically, also pretty damn hilarious. However, he was also thoroughly addicted to being able to “summon through the æther” (or, as ordinary mortals might say, download) a book to his StarkPad at two in the morning. That was, when he wasn’t ordering big coffee table books full of photographs and art, or beautifully illustrated children’s books, all of which he and the kids would pore over for hours, turning the pages reverently.

Tony knew their godlike eyes saw more than his mortal eyes ever could, because all four members of his family would often show him things as they observed them, and those glimpses were phenomenal—his brain just wasn’t wired to see things that way, not always. It was too much. It made him feel like he was going to blow out his processors.

They were so special, his beautiful family. So special and precious and astounding, and he loved them in ways he couldn’t even start to put into words. Maybe the words didn’t even exist yet.

“What are you trying to make, babe?” Tony asked, going back to lightly rubbing Loki’s shoulders.

“When my dear son Sherlock was young, still at school, I made for him a microscope, which he greatly loved, but which was lost to him during a time when he was lost to himself. It is some months yet before his birthday, but I would like to craft for him another such, perhaps better than the first. Do you think he would welcome the gift?”

Tony thought of his fiancé’s odd, prickly, brilliant son, and couldn’t help but grin. “I think you’re a sweetheart, and anything you make is bound to be amazing. If Sherlock can’t appreciate that…”

He shrugged. “It goes without saying, you can use any tools you want.”

”You are kindness itself, _hjarta minn_!” Loki pulled himself upright with a single, fluid twist, giving Tony one of his gorgeous, full-of-light-and-joy grins. “Tony, beloved, can you believe the day is over and we made it through? And, truly, the children did superlatively well.” A look of amazement spread over his face, rendering him so beautiful Tony couldn’t look away, though at the same time it almost hurt to look. “I made myself so terribly frightened, ill with fear, and yet there was no need, as I also performed beautifully. Did I not? Did I not also perform superbly? Beyond expectation even?”

Tony held Loki’s face between his hands, connecting to him in a long, slow, deep kiss, Loki’s sudden little fireworks of joy bursting and sizzling throughout his own body.

“You were so brilliant, babe,” he breathed, when they finally parted. “So brilliant, so beautiful, so badass and probably a bunch of other really positive words that start with B that I can’t think of at the moment because my brain is badly broken.”

Loki laughed, a low, delicious sound. He loved wordplay of all kinds, even silly wordplay, which was all Tony’s over-stressed mind could come up with right then. His kiss for Tony was so sweet,and so tender Tony could have stayed in it forever, immersed in all the love and trust Loki sent to him, without the least reserve.

At last, though, Loki pulled away. “Alas, love, the time has come to restore your poor brain with the consumption of vast amounts of Meat Lovers’ Pizza, for the deliverer has arrived and awaits your signature, and our younglings are as ravenous small wolves.”

 _The Deliverer has arrived!_ Tony thought, laughing internally. It sounded like a tag line for an apocalyptic horror movie, rather than some kid bringing pizza to their door.

These days he couldn’t, absolutely, positively couldn’t, imagine a life without Loki in it. How in hell had he ever survived all his earlier years? Half his life, probably, without his wonderful lover, companion, friend.

Tony remembered only too well how empty those years had sometimes felt.

“One more kiss where the kids can’t ‘ewww’ at us?” he asked.

Loki seemed more than happy to oblige.

Joined arm in arm, they went to rejoin their children.

* * *

Tony shuffled out of the bedroom yawning, with a severe case of bed-head and his robe indifferently tied, having just awakened from a sleep-of-the-dead, during which he’d experienced a minutely detailed dream of creating a machine that patched the hole in the ozone layer, ended global warming, healed the polar ice caps and saved the polar bears.

About the time the polar bears were performing a stately and complicated dance of celebration in his honor, Tony’s rational mind informed him that was probably enough of that, and he might want to think about rising and shining.

He still took a notepad and pen into the john with him and scribbled down everything he could remember about the StarkPatch machine. In an hour it might prove to be utter bullshit, but it might also prove to contain some nuggets of good ideas, as his more vivid dreams often did, stuff he wouldn’t remember if it wasn’t on paper. Maybe it was his age, that his creative process was formed at a time when there wasn’t oodles of beautiful tech to capture his thoughts, but even telling them to J.A.R.V.I.S. wasn’t the same, he had to see them on the page.

Loki shared the habit, and the two of them kept a hanging file on the closet wall with a Tony-pocket and a Loki-pocket, both cubbies full of restaurant napkins, used envelopes and notebook pages, all thoroughly sketched or scribbled over.

Loki’s scribbles tended to be in foreign languages or runes, but the sketches were beautiful, done in a loose artistic shorthand different from Loki’s highly detailed finished works. Every time Tony found one in the trash, that his fiancé had either finished with or decided he didn’t like, he fished it out and added it to a special file drawer in his office.

He’d been amused to discover that Loki did the exact same thing, that he also kept a box of Tony-scribbles in his studio. He’d even pinned a couple examples of Tony’s quick-and-dirty draftsmanship to his big corkboard, though, for the life of him, Tony couldn’t figure out why Loki found those particular sketches memorable.

When he wandered out to the living room en route to the kitchen, ruffling up his already disastrous hair, yawning like crazy and in dire need of coffee, Tony found his fiancé seated on the couch, his own big StarkPad propped on Loki’s tabletop easel on the coffee table. Loki was talking, hoarsely (though also particularly slowly and clearly) to the StarkPad, in what might have been Greek.

Loki glanced over his shoulder, giving Tony a quick grin before he turned back around, saying something to the screen that sounded stately and erudite, but since it also happened to contain his name, probably wasn’t.

At that point a young woman came on the screen, asking a question in a halting and slightly-shaky version of the same language Loki had been speaking.

“Ah, yes, Loki answered, smiling, “I wouldn’t actually have expected you to know that word at this juncture.” He wrote the word in question on the screen with the light pen—yup, it was Greek all right—flipping it around the right way to show to his apparent audience. “The translation would be ‘disheveled, unkempt’.”

Tony laughed. Yup, Loki had definitely been talking about him.

“Hell, I guess I don’t even know that word in English,” a male voice said.

“Perhaps, then, ‘a hot mess’,” Loki replied, to general laughter. “And with that, I believe it’s time to conclude. I hope to see you, in person if at all possible—with your translations—on Friday. I appreciate that this isn’t the easiest way to attend class. Thank you all immensely for your patience.”

“Feel better, Dr. F.,” several of the students chorused.

“I thank you, truly,” Loki answered. “Until Friday, then.” He reached to end the connection, then sagged back into the couch cushions.

Tony poured himself a cup of coffee (black, straight up, as his father would always say), and made Loki a cup of tea, adding a splash of the goat’s milk that no longer even seemed stinky to  him anymore, he was that used to the smell.

“Sensible you, telecommuting today.” Tony took a seat beside his fiancé on the couch. “You’re not feeling so good, huh?”

“Our dear friend Kitty helped me to set up the connection. She is quite clever with technology, though I improve also in my skills.” Loki took a long drink of his tea, saying what he always said. “Ah… bliss. I thank you, belovéd.”

“You’re very welcome. You’re feeling so crappy you telecommuted to work, but you got the kids off to school all on your own? You should have woken me up, babe.”

“Fen was quite gentle this morning, sensing I felt unwell. Hela and Jöri, of course, were wondrously helpful. Never was I more thankful, however, that they attend school in the building in which we live. I thought I might need to call upon my brother to convey them thence, but I did not. All went perfectly, and you were so weary, clearly, I did not wish to disturb you. I slept well and deeply also, now that the fear has been removed.”

“No midnight serenade for the lobby dudes?”

“I could not have performed last night to save the children’s lives.” Loki sipped his tea again. “Oh, and a small piece of bad news. Angelica, who was to be our caterer, has fallen down escalator stairs on her way to the subway and broken her leg in myriad places. We have jointly sent a card and lovely flowers to her hospital, expressing our sorrow for her mishap and telling her she must not worry, also that she shall most certainly be paid for all the hard work she has put in thus far, developing a menu and recipes. In light of the future work she shall miss during her recovery, I suggest, as we can well afford the sum, that we pay her the agreed amount entire, with a bonus. I had an idea, also, which I floated by Pepper, who agreed…” Loki leaned forward stiffly, setting his cup, still half full, on the table.

“I didn’t make your tea right? You don’t like it?”

“It was very good, Tony. Perhaps later. At any rate, Pepper agreed that to have a director of catering for the Tower would be a wise idea, as there are constant meetings and events, all requiring that those who attend be fed, and having herself been impressed by the quality of Angelica’s offerings, she has created the position for her, including, of course, health benefits retroactive to the beginning of this week, so that she need not worry about hospital expenses. This I conveyed to the mother and father of Angelica, as Angelica herself underwent surgery at the moment, to have pins inserted into the broken places of her leg.”

Tony scooted closer, cradling his own cup as he stared at his fiancé. “You know, you really are something, Lok.”

Loki’s eyes immediately filled with anxiety. “Tony, it was not well done? It was wrong? I should not have interfered?”

“God, I wish you didn’t always go to that place, sweetheart.” After a quick swig, Tony set his cup down next to Loki’s. “You are just so damn sweet. You think of the kids. You think of me. We lose our caterer and instead of going totally bridezilla all you can think of is how to make her life better. Reason 1007 that I love you.”

Loki snuggled up next to him, leaning his head on Tony’s shoulder. “I know not… ‘Bridezilla’?”

“A combination of bride and the giant lizard-monster, Godzilla. Remember, we saw the movie?”

“Ah, I believe I understand. A bride who tramples upon the feelings of others, most unmannerly, in an effort to have her own way in all things?”

“You got it, babe.”

“Bridezilla.” Loki laughed. “It presents a most amusing mental image.”

“It kinda does, doesn’t it?”

“However, I would never be so. Never.”

“I know you wouldn’t, my love. Witness my earlier comment about the sweetness of you.” The heat of Loki’s body seemed to be burning through his shirt, and Tony took a minute to feel his forehead. “Wow, that’s some fever you’ve got going, Lok. In light of no longer having a caterer,should we maybe postpone this wedding thing ‘til you’re better?”

“No!” Loki clutched at his arm. “Please, no, Tony. It is… With all the disappointments… I only want so badly to be wed to you. I wish to call you ‘husband’, and for you to call me ‘husband’ in return, and for us to be as one. It is all I have wanted since I discovered such a thing was possible, here in your city of New York.” His eyes had gotten so big, and so sad, Tony couldn’t insist, even for Loki’s own good. “Foolish as it seems,” Loki added, “I also fear to tempt the _Nornir_ with any delay.”

“Okay, okay.” Tony kissed Loki's hot forehead tenderly. “I’m forever a sucker for the puppy eyes, and besides, with all the shit that’s happened to us, I totally get what you’re saying about tempting those damn… er… lovely, wise… Norns. Actually, if you know any good ways to appease them and get them off our backs for the duration—a nice fruit basket, or a burnt offering, whatever they like—I wish you’d let me know.”

Loki laughed. "Hmm, perhaps the fruit basket?"

"You just tell me where in the Netherworld to send it." Tony gave him another kiss, because it was just too tempting not to. “So, how about this, then—you teach via StarkPad for the rest of the week, and you don’t lift even a pinky finger around this place. You let me drive you to Boys’ and Girls’ Club for an abbreviated session, just to check in with the kids, which you know Jorge would be perfectly fine with, since you’re not only ahead on your hours but he’s crazy worried about you. I’ll also take you to your—very brief--appointment with Director, if we can’t lure him over with the promise of Mrs. R.’s cooking. Other than that you do nothing but sleep, relax and get well. Oh, and we get Hank out here to take a look and see what he can do to make you better. Agreed, babe?”

“You are most wise, belovéd,” Loki murmured, already most of the way asleep against Tony’s chest.

Tony moved out from beside him, gently levering Loki’s head down to a cushion, lifting up his feet until he was stretched out comfortably, then covering him over with his favorite green throw.

A wave of tenderness toward his beautiful, vulnerable, perfect, alien love washed over him, so intense it made his throat tighten and his eyes prickle.

“I’ll tell you a secret, Lok,” Tony said, gently brushing a few stray strands of hair back from Loki’s face. “I wish to hell I could take back every bit of stupid shit I ever said or did to you. I wish I could protect you from every bad thing, ever, from here on out, and make all those harsh memories, old and new, stop hurting you. You’re the only one for me, my sweetness. You’re all I want, too, ever and always.”


	7. Family Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki feels awful, Tony continues to be sweet (though sometimes clueless), Thor channels his inner mom, Bruce is better than usual, and Big Blue comes to the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated "N" for extended periods of nausea. Poor Loki (and sensitive readers, though I try not to get graphic).
> 
> One of my mom-theories firmly holds that there is an inverse ratio between how horrible a parent feels and how needy his or her children become. Poor Loki again.
> 
> A typical Reuben sandwich is served hot and contains corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing, grilled between slices of rye bread. Clearly, the smell alone would prove fatal to any person experiencing nausea.
> 
> Baba Yaga is a common figure is Russian fairy tales--a hideous witch who lives in a cottage that wanders around the forest on giant chicken-legs. Rather than using a broomstick, Baba Yaga zooms about seated in a mortar, beating at the air with a pestle to make herself fly.  
> It occurred to me that in Asgard as I've described it, fictional things, as we know them, basically don't exist. No wonder Thor and Loki are so confused! Thus, Poppin' Fresh (the little white Pillsbury Company mascot), unicorns and narwhals.

* * *

Loki awoke to a powerful awareness that he felt crawlingly unpleasant, both in body and in spirit, feelings that badly diminished his joy in his work, his anticipation of the fast-approaching day of his marriage, even the comfort of the time he spent with Tony and the children. Already, he knew it would require every scrap of kindness and patience he possessed merely to see them off to work and school with a bare measure of civility.

He nearly snapped at Tony, as Tony added to his awakeness with the usual yawning, stretching, joint-cracking, item-fumbling, tune-humming, noise of his rising.

_Why, once only, can you not merely deal with things on your own?_ Loki thought, even though he knew his unspoken irritability to be unreasonable. _If you are to be the children’s father, can you not be responsible? Can your mortal Midgardian mind not comprehend that I am unwell?_

Instead they played a most ridiculous game, Tony’s mouth saying, “No, babe, don’t get up, I’ve got this.” Whilst the language of his body and secret mind screamed, _Panic! Panic! Get up pleeeease!_ in the tones of a whining child.

And so he had risen, face turned from his fiancé so that Tony (who had been so very sweet with him in the evening and night) would not see the glare of ire upon his visage, which Loki felt powerless to contain.

He had even locked the door to the room of requirement, which was commonly left unlocked, and had been sick before his shower, while the water was warming, then after, which rendered him chilled, sweat-drenched and unclean again.

When rousing the children he had hurt too badly to even attempt to lift Fen, was made cross at the children’s noise while he prepared their morning repast, and felt actual rage at Tony, that he merely dropped into his seat between the boys, tickling and sporting with them as if he, too, were one of the younglings.  

Upon a normal day Loki would have merely spoken, calling out cheerfully, “ _Hjarta minn_ , will you help me at this time?” but it seemed all his better words had departed him, and Loki decided it best not to speak at all.

He desired Tony to rise and help of his own accord, not to be asked and deign to respond. It ought not to have been a large concern, but on this morning it became one, until Loki became so angry at his fiancé’s heedless blindness that his hands began to glow greenly and then, with his magic rampant and uncontained, because he had become too furious to keep it in check, he nearly bled into the eggs.

He would have done so indeed, had not Hela come to his rescue with a vast bouquet of tissues.

Tony sprang to his feet then. “Huh? What? Lok, what’s up?”

Loki waved him off as he sprinted for their bedroom and the room of requirement beyond, but Tony followed him anyway a few moments later, kneeling behind him and pulling back Loki’s hair, securing it firmly with an elastic.

“The children,” Loki gasped, when he could spare breath.

“Your brother’s walking them to school. He was bored at home alone anyway. As much as I would love to, I can’t ditch work today, but Thor promised he will stay with you. He’s glad to. Did I mention the boredom?”

“Oh, joy.” Loki spat into the toilet.

Tony handed him a bottle of water with which to rinse his mouth. Loki did so, then spat again, Tony rubbing between his shoulders in slow gentle circles, until Loki felt well enough to sit upon the cold tile with his back against the shower enclosure.

“My poor, sad, cranky baby.” Tony wet a flannel, wiping Loki’s face with the same gentleness. “I really pissed you off this morning, huh? I knew you felt craptastic. Why in hell didn’t you stay in bed like I told you to?”

“The language of your body whined at me.”

“Say what?”

“Your lips dropped words that your mind and body denied.”

“Uh-huh.” Tony considered. “That being the case, will you do me three favors, babe?”

Loki scooted back to his former position.

“Round two?” Tony asked sympathetically.

Loki held up four fingers. His fiance winced.

“My head whirls, Tony.” He hated the whimpering sound of his own voice.

“My poor, poor baby. How about this, sweetheart--you hold the fort here for a second while I get things set up in the bedroom for you, then you can at least lie down and puke in comfort instead of crouching here on the cold-ass floor. And before you tell me primly, ‘I dislike to be sick in bins,’ there’s a good chance that if you’re lying flat down, resting, you’ll feel a lot better and won’t need to be sick at all. Am I right?”

“I am revolting,” Loki said. “Why should you wish to marry someone so revolting?”

“Silly, yes, that you’d even think such a thing, but by all your gods upstairs, Lok, never revolting. Never, got that? My sweet baby.” He stroked back threads of Loki’s sweat-dampened hair that had escaped their elastic. Back in a flash, okay?”

“I actually set you up in the living room,” Tony said, upon his return. “I remembered you usually like that better during the day. Was that all right?”

“Clever Tony,” was all Loki could say. Though his stomach had settled somewhat, his head continued to whirl terribly and he felt as if he was burning, like a stick of dry wood in a bonfire.

He required all his own strength and Tony’s assistance even to stand, his back pained him so horribly, and he could not walk at all without his fiancé’s aid. He nearly wept, it was such a relief to stretch out on the cool sheet Tony had tucked over the sofa cushions.

“Oh, Lok.” Tony’s voice sounded terribly sad, but Loki did not want him to feel sad. “Look at you. Just look at you. This isn’t good, baby.”

Loki shut his eyes as his love pressed a pack of ice, wrapped in a tea-towel, to his hot brow. The cool felt utterly blissful, and he sighed at the relief of it against his skin.

“Do not feel sad, _hjarta minn_. It is I who ought to feel sad, for I judged you and became angry, when you now display such goodness toward me.”

“Yeah, I’m so good I sat on my ass playing with the kids while you cooked the fucking eggs. Do me a favor, okay, and go by the words that—what was it?—drop from my lips? Because my mind and body are spoiled, entitled brats, and you just can’t listen to what they say. Which leads me to point one: either we hire an _au pair_ , foreign or domestic brand, to help, or we get Thor up here, at least in the A.M., as a regular thing. Or both. You're trying to do too much, babe. It's not good for you.”

“We said we did not wish the children to be raised amongst servants,” Loki answered. He felt like weeping a second time, that he had meant to be such a good parent, yet failed again and again.

“No, gods, no. Don’t even think that. I don’t know how many _Pabbis_ there are in the Nine Realms, but even if there are a million--a billion--I know you’re the very, very best of them. Just think about it, though. Think if you had someone to make breakfast and corral the kids’ shit, even help Hela with that morning horrorshow she calls her hair? It would just take off some of the pressure. We’d have a little more time to get ourselves ready, a little more calm-time with Fen. And an _au pair_ isn’t really a servant, he or she is more like a member of the family, like an older sibling, or cousin. Ask at the university, among kids you trust. I bet someone would jump at the chance to live in Stark Tower with free room and board, all the tech they ever dreamed of, two Ph.D.’s to help with their classes, access to tons of art supplies if that’s their thing…”

Loki started to shiver, and Tony took the pack of ice away, covering him instead with his favorite green afghan.

“Just think about it, okay?”

“I will think,” Loki said faintly. “There are two other things?”

“Well, one was just about listening only to what my mouth says, because that’s what I really mean, and the rest is just my selfish past talking.”

“That I will also consider. I doubt I should have been so unfair to you had I felt less unwell.”

“I thought that too. You were just at the end of your rope, sweetie, and I--literally--didn't help.”

“At the end of Gungnir,” Loki murmured, and in his head he spiraled and spiraled through darkness that would not end—except it did end when Tony poked the end of a straw into his mouth.

“Just ginger ale, and just a couple sips to see how your tummy takes it. And kindly remember that you’ll never again be dangling from the end of the Assfather’s spear. That’s over and done with. Your home is right here and it’s not going anywhere.”

“Yes, I realize.” Loki took another sip, just to show contrition. The ginger ale burned his raw throat a bit, but soothed his stomach wonderfully. He began to feel sleepy. “And, pray, the third thing is, whilst I yet lie awake?”

“Umn…” Tony began to speak very quickly, as if feelings of guilt propelled his words. “I cancelled your morning class and Hank McCoy is on his way here."

“It is good,” Loki murmured, after consideration. He saw that it was so—he was in no fit state to impart any sort of wisdom to his students this morning, he would merely waste their time with incoherent ramblings, then likely fall asleep before their eyes. He had also not the least hope of regaining his health without Hank’s intervention. "Yes, it is good. You have done well to act as you did, dearest love."

Tony sat quietly on the table by the sofa, holding Loki’s hand as he drifted ever deeper.

 

Loki’s time with Hank proved most unpleasant, gentle as his physician attempted to be with him.

Big Blue did not lecture, but Loki well knew that between his general weakness, his deep grief for lost Wilhelm, and his panic over the vetting of the Stark Industries board, he had neglected every aspect of getting or keeping himself well, and the incision in his back had become hideously infected, to the point that if Hank had not come to treat him, and treat him that very day, he might well have died from the harm it did him.

If he felt very, very ill, Hank informed him, that was because he was indeed very, very ill.

Big Blue would have no more of it. In the future Loki was to follow all orders without fail. If he seemed to be well enough after medication and undergoing the debriding process (which was a way of saying “cleaning his wound” but sounded frightening, and in practice was even worse than it sounded) he might be allowed to return upstairs in his brother’s care to rest until the time came for his graduate class, after which he was to return to the infirmary, where Hank would have studied the results of his scans and bloodwork. At that point they, and Tony, might make further decisions.

Loki, fearful that Hank would insist the ceremony of marriage be cancelled for this time, attempted to give him dog’s-eyes, like the sorrowful great eyes of the mopsi that had adorned his shirt in the night, but Big Blue would have none of that, either. He positively glowered.

Loki would at the least have liked to say that he scampered back home with his tail between his legs, except the truth was that Thor brought him out from the infirmary in that same wheeled chair he had been forced to occupy after his time with S.H.I.E.L.D.

The humiliation was terrible, especially as Bruce saw them coming out and made a quip of some sort that Loki felt too miserable to hear, though he did hear quite clearly when Thor lifted the physicist one-handed from the floor by his collar, shouting in his face, “No more, no more, miscreant, or you and I shall shall surely meet!”

“It does not matter,” Loki told him wearily. “You must not fight your Shield-Brother over such a creature of no worth as myself.”

His vision cleared for a moment and he observed Bruce’s expression, which was shaken, and a bit confused.

“It does not matter, Bruce,” Loki told him, kindly as he could. “Whatever dark thing you say of me is undoubtedly true. I found myself too distracted to hear at that moment…” He pressed his hand to his mouth, the pain and the medicines Bruce had put into him working through his body.

He did not want to be sick again here, in the clean corridor, especially before Bruce, but for a long moment thought he would have no choice in the matter.

“Thor, he’s going to…” Bruce began.

Thor put a large hand, cupped, beneath Loki’s chin, which for a moment shocked the sickness out of him.

Loki scowled up at his brother. “I am perfectly well, and, by the _Nornir_ , Thor, I have no intention of vomiting into your hand!”

Bruce ducked into the infirmary and, apparently unobserved by Hank, reemerged with the first receptacle he’d found: a bedpan of pink plastic.

Loki rolled his eyes, intending to loose upon the physicist a statement of equal scorn to the one he bestowed upon his brother, except that the eye-roll proved his undoing. He found himself hanging over the pink pan, in utter wretchedness and humiliation, his hair streaming everywhere, nose gushing blood, back screaming, retching and retching and retching, although his stomach produced no more than a scant tablespoon of ginger ale at the very beginning and nothing after.

As time passed he began to weep, so great was his pain and misery, at which point Thor must have decided, as no more seemed forthcoming, to simply sweep Loki up in his powerful arms and convey him thus to the penthouse.

God and mortal working together completed his humiliation by making him clean once more, then redressing him in fresh clothes. When they had finished, Loki, with great effort, rolled toward the back of the sofa, burying his face between the cushions.

“I’ll take that as my invitation to leave,” Bruce said, somewhere in the distance.

“View not my brother’s reaction unkindly, I pray you,” Thor answered. “It was ever Loki’s way, even in First Childhood, to creep into the dark and nurse his wounds alone, if he could not cast them aside with cleverness and a jest.”

Thor’s fingertips traveled lightly over Loki’s hair. “My poor, foolish Lolo, you ever believed no one would care, though there were those who did care.”

_Do not call me that childish name, brother,_ Loki thought. _Not before one who hates me. Not before one who needs no further weapons to hoard within his armoury._

“You really love your brother, don’t you, Thor?” Bruce’s tone held no mockery, only a trace of curiosity. “How do you manage that? You’re so different.”

“At the beginning, we were alone. I was his family, he was mine—the nobles of Asgard concern themselves little with those in First Childhood, who are considered foolish and dull. We have first wet-nurses, then nurses, then instructors, and it is not until after the First Change, when we began learning future duties and can be bonded in profitable matches, as my mother, of the _Vanir_ , was given to my father, of the _Ӕsir_ , as a facilitation of open trade between their Realms. I saw my parents now and then, at feastings, of course, and on my Naming-Day, and for the twelve days of _Jul_ , and my mother gave Loki instruction in magic, so that, strong as he was, he would not hurt himself or others. Otherwise, we were much as we are in these days. It was for the best, then, as it is now.”

“You know about my father,” Bruce said. It was not a question.

“I know of him,” Thor answered, his voice as gentle as Thor’s booming voice ever could be.

“I’m trying to imagine if he was all-seeing, all-powerful—really those things, not the way all kids think their parents are invincible—and had centuries to do his dirty work, and still hated me the way he always hated me.”

“Then you might well be Loki,” Thor said simply, in the same gentle voice. “But perhaps not my Loki, who in the end is full of love, tenderness and many most-beautiful qualities, even as his heart is wounded nearly unto death. You would be the Loki who fell into the abyss, whose mind was warped first by grief, cruelty, lies and betrayal, then by the mind-stone of the scepter and by the dark and terrible thoughts of evil beings. I pity you no small amount, Bruce Banner, that you insist upon seeing only darkness where there is so much light—but perhaps that is the burden of your own sadly wounded heart?”

“Yeah,” Bruce answered. He sounded sad, and possibly that emotion which Tony called “stressed.”

“Maybe that’s it. Look, Thor, give me a shout if you need anything, okay? I’ll bring you up some lunch from the deli later, so you don’t have to worry about cooking.”

“I thank you greatly!” Thor replied in a cheerful voice. “Although I always enjoy greatly to cook, I ought not to divide my attention at this time, I think. Allow me to provide you with coin of the realm, that you not be inconvenienced.”

“No, I…” Bruce began, almost fearfully, perhaps in thought that Thor might present him with sacks full of actual coin. However, Loki soon heard the rustle of notes passed hand-to-hand.

“I enjoy very much to eat the sandwiches of Rueben, with extra pastrami,” Thor proclaimed. “My breakfast was large. Four ought to suffice. If his stomach calms later, Loki often enjoys the chicken soup of Mrs. Rosenblum, which will also keep well for later warming if he wants it not immediately.”

Bruce laughed. “You might want to do your poor brother a kind favour and eat your sandwiches of Rueben out on the terrace of Tony Stark, or you may end up wearing the chicken soup of Mrs. Rosenblum recycled all over you.”

_Thank you, Bruce!_ Loki thought.

“Ah, because the scent of my most-delicious sandwiches is strong, and my brother’s stomach is weak! Your point is taken, Shield-Brother. I promise to be sensitive to Loki’s weakness.”

_And thank you, Thor_ , thought Loki drily.

A heavy sound followed, of Thor’s footsteps as he escorted Bruce to the door, the door opening, then nearly slamming shut.

Everything about his brother seemed huge today, as if his large, healthy lungs sucked all the air from the room, and every sound he made reverberated through Loki’s skull.

“I did not mean weakness as weakness,” Thor said. “Never as a thing I stood to judge you upon, my sweet brother. I only fear greatly for you, that you suffer so, and there remains little I can do to render aid. May I open the doors to the terrace, Loki, and allow passage to the sweet spring air?” He touched Loki’s shoulder as lightly as he was able. “It might ease your breath a little, _hjarta minn_. And please not to face toward the nether-cushions of the sofa, Loki. I would see your face, and you may better take the air.”

Thor helped him to turn, and careful as his brother attempted to be, the motion hurt so much it left Loki entirely without breath, and weaker than ever.

“See? There you are.” Thor fetched a new pack of ice from the kitchen, wrapped it in a clean teatowel, and as Tony had done, laid it across his brow.

Again, the feeling of bliss came over him almost at once, and it occurred to Loki that much of his nausea and weakness might have to do with the raging fever wreaking havoc upon the _Jötunn_ parts of his physiology. He would have to ask Hank for his thoughts on the matter.

“It is better, is it not?” Thor seemed anxious, and in that moment, quite young.

“It is better,” Loki agreed. “I know you mean only kindness, Thor. Please do not believe me ungrateful in my thinking…”

The fact was, though he loved Thor with his whole heart, Loki would have liked very much for his brother to go away, if only temporarily, and allow him peace. If he could only sleep for a little, then he could soldier on through the class he must teach across the æther and then, duty fulfilled (and if everyone else would simply to agree to leave him alone for a time), he would sleep long and deeply.

It was all he desired at that moment, all he longed for, only slumber and silence.

Unreasonable as it might be, he would blame Hank McCoy. Hank, with his debridement had done most dreadful things to his back, things that made the scar not only pull, as it had before, but burn like the stings of a thousand wasps combined with the heat of a thousand flames. Not being a cruel man, Hank had also given him tablets for pain, ones Loki knew well, as he had used them (sparingly, always) on previous occasions. They caused him to go sleepy and slow—even more so than he already was, and in a way Loki could not shake off in order to focus his senses--and though the thought of being sleepy and slow, as well as free of pain, was at the moment monumentally appealing…

There remained still this final class of the day to teach, that of his graduate students, who oft-times, annoyingly, seemed determined to question his thoughts in entirely thoughtless ways, the better, like the foolish ones in the professional journals, to advance their wit (and their witless theories) over his own. The clever ones he appreciated greatly, the pompous, the ones who would not actually use their native intelligence, regurgitating only the misguided thoughts of others, who would not think things through from beginning until end (the ones who would no doubt complain pettishly about their low marks at the conclusion of the semester), expounding their own perceived brilliance, brought him only irritation.

He had not the patience for it, not this afternoon. Hank had put a drip in his arm and given antibiotics, later he must take more antibiotic tablets by mouth as well, if his stomach, which still felt wretched, consented to accept them.

Dreading everything his life currently had to offer, Loki fell into a deep, unsatisfying sleep.

He dreamed of being pursued at haste through a heavy wood by the chicken-legged cottage of the witch Baba Yaga. The witch herself zoomed to and fro about her own chimney and rooftop, crouched upon the rim of her mortar, rather than within it as was traditional, beating at the air with her pestle to go ever faster. Loki soon became aware that the reason the hideous creature did not go within the bowl herself was that it brimmed full of chicken soup, which slopped across the lip with every dip and dive the mortar took. It was a very silly dream, and annoying too, especially as Loki also became quickly aware that it possessed a real-world counterpart.

“Brother?” Thor waved a round, white pasteboard container—clearly the threatened chicken soup--before Loki’s face.

Loki found some difficulty in fighting the peevish urge to bat it, and its stomach-churning odor, far away from his offended nose. Perhaps with luck he might even knock his brother’s offering out through the sliding doors—which continued to stand open, it being such a fine, spring day--and onto the terrace, with greater luck over the railings, if his aim held true.

It seemed unlikely, however that this was a day for either luck or trueness of aim. Thor assayed another wave of the carton beneath Loki’s nose, meant to be tempting. “The soup is a gift from most-darling Mrs. Rosenblum, she who your husband-to-be calls ‘Mrs. Poppin' Fresh,’ I know not why…”

“It is a thing of advertising,” Loki informed him, trying well as he could to keep kindness in his voice, in return for his brother’s intended kindness. Thor had done nothing to merit his crossness, only tried to care for him as best he knew how. “A plump, small gnome of baked goods that will laugh when poked at. Those I have seen all appear to be male.”

Thor became momentarily diverted from his mission. “Are these gnomes a thing of reality, brother? Where upon Midgard may they be found?”

“I think not.” Loki considered. “In truth, I know not, Thor. I must ask my husband, and hope he chooses not to tease me, but answers me truthfully, as he neglected to do with the unicorn. It transpires that they exist not within the Green Isle of the Irish, as he previously stated. That, it seems, was merely a jest at our expense, or so Kurt informed me.”

Thor frowned. “But I have seen divers pictures, Loki. How may a thing so oft depicted not exist in truth?”

“My brother, Kurt, dearest of friends, advised me that the creatures are a fiction beloved by many, particularly dear to the hearts of young maids, and are thus often drawn from the imagination, as is peculiar to Midgard. Midgardians are beings of quite fervid imagination, as you know.”

“I am amazed,” Thor said, and truly appeared so. “There is a small whale with a horn upon its brow,” he added plaintively. “I am certain that is true. I observed it in one of the films-of-truth, which they name documentaries.”

“Yes,” Loki agreed, “But despite the horn, brother, it is not a creature of magic, as the unicorn is meant to be. The horn is in fact an extension of baleen, like the sieves that lie within the throats of many great whales, straining through the miniscule creatures upon which they dine.”

“I bow to your knowledge, brother,” Thor said. “But I am saddened, as dear Mrs. Rosenblum will be saddened if you do not eat her most-excellent soup. She is downcast greatly by your thinness as it is, Loki, and how it takes away from your most-striking beauty to see you appear so frail. Would you not be strong for your long-anticipated ceremony of marriage, _hjarta minn_?”

Tony had informed him that the path upon which his brother was currently engaged was called a “guilt trip,” and that it was a tactic oft employed by mothers upon their young. His own mother, Loki recalled, had not been immune to such proceedings.

He decided upon another tactic of his own. “Dearest Thor, I will with glad heart eat of most generous Mrs. Rosenblum’s soup, but the hour of my final class of the day rapidly approaches, and I must peruse my notations ere it begins. Would you be so kind as to store the carton for me within the refrigerator, then heat the soup again once my class concludes? At that time I will also take the tablets which deaden pain, and all will be well.”

An expression of relief spread across Thor’s face. “Ah! You refused not out of stubbornness, I see, but from a constraint of time. My apologies, brother. I forgot the hour approached.” He bounced to his feet with a cheerful vigor that Loki devoutly wished he could share, and carried the offending carton to the kitchen. “Safe and sound, awaiting your readiness,” he called toward the common area.

“I thank you, brother,” Loki said faintly, as a wave of sick dizziness washed over him. He needed badly to lie flat upon the sofa once more, and it was true he might just as easily review his notes from that position. He stretched out, shutting his eyes only for a moment, and awoke, shivering madly, to Thor’s hand on his shoulder.

“Loki, has not the appointed hour come?” There was a line of concern between his brother’s brows. “I should not have awakened you otherwise. In truth, you look very unwell, _hjarta minn_. I believe it true that you should not attempt to send your wise instruction out upon the æther, as you have planned, but should rightly request a ‘make-up day’, and instead rest yourself. A dreadful pallor hangs about you, and you’ve a look now that I know of old, that says your belly feels great distress.”

Thor rubbed the offending area lightly with his large, warm hand. The sensation was, indeed, extremely soothing. Loki allowed himself to relax into it, taking in slow breaths of no great depth.

“I remember, when you were a youngling…” Thor began, then stopped. They both knew what Thor remembered.

“The ceaseless taunting…” Thor continued. “I should not have…”

“Those days are forgotten.” Loki made a gesture, as if to indicate a puff of wind. “They are gone.”

“I foolishly and wrongly believed…” Thor tried.

“That we were the same?” It had not been at all what he meant to say, and Loki could see by his brother’s face that Thor’s feelings were wounded. And now the time to review his notes had flown by.

“I meant no cruelty, dearest,” Loki said. “Will you not believe me?”

“I harmed you many times,” Thor mourned.

Loki sneaked a look over his brother’s mighty shoulder at the clock upon the mantle. “And I harmed you, with words, with deeds, with anger…”

Oh, _Nornir_ , only a minute perhaps lacked of the time.

“Belovéd Thor, did we not agree to speak no more of those days?” Loki levered himself upright slowly. The room spun around him three times, or possibly more, he found himself beyond counting at that time.

Thor draped his green blanket around his shoulders, rubbing Loki’s back gently. “Breathe, as when you were winded upon the practice fields, my brother, having fought so hard to equal me you made yourself ill. You have a minute or so before the machine must be connected, and I think your scholars would not judge you whatever minutes more were needed in order to compose yourself.

_Compose yourself_ , Loki thought. It was a pleasant term. 

He pressed the buttons that would begin his connection. The movement sent misshapen stars of red and yellow whirling and flashing before his eyes He reached for the large copper bowl, meant to be eye-pleasing, atop the table, unceremoniously dumped the decorative orbs within upon the floor, and heaved.

The entire world changed to spinning darkness.

_The abyss?_ Loki thought. _Surely not the abyss._

Abruptly his stomach lurched again. He could not feel the heavy bowl in his hands, but he could feel Thor steady him.

At the same moment Tony must have entered the penthouse without Loki’s distracted hearing taking note. He completed the ætheric connection and, bending low, told the screen,  “Hi. Mr. Stark here. Class is officially dismissed, kids. I’m sure since Dr. Friggason is the hyper-responsible type, he’ll make it up to you soon. Meanwhile it’s a beautiful day. Sorry you had to make trip in, but get out, enjoy the sunshine, ‘kay? Okay.”

"Sir, your attitude…” a male voice began. Trigaldi, naturally, forever impressed with his own cleverness, and if not quite the bane of Loki’s teaching existence, at least a thorn in his side. He heaved again. The pain of it went all the way down to his toes.

“Son,” Tony said, “If you’re going to be a linguist, you need to pay attention to sounds. Surely you can interpret that one? If not, it means…”

His fiancé, it transpired, knew a remarkable number of euphemisms for being sick.

Loki, utterly helpless, nonetheless felt his cheeks burn with humiliation. Would Tony ever learn even a measure of decorum?

Some things were private, shameful. How should he ever be able to face his class again? Was it truly meant to be a day in which he must suffer humiliation again and again?

_Tony. Tony, please_ , he sent. _My apologies to convey…_

“Dr. Friggason!” he heard a different male voice say in concern. “Uh, someone on the other end, you might want to…?”

Thor managed to catch him only just in time.


	8. Today Will Be My Marrying Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank is a good doctor, Kurt and Logan are great friends. Loki does what he should for once and it looks like there may actually be a wedding.
> 
> Just not in this chapter. ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bohemian Rhapsody (from the Queen's 1975 album _A Night at the Opera_ was written by Freddie Mercury.
> 
> "Chalk and cheese"=things that don't mix well together
> 
> Loki's second song is "Royals" by Lorde (from the 2013 album _Pure Heroine_
> 
> "Baldy"=Professor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men
> 
> "longneck"=beer bottle
> 
> The book Loki is reading the kids is _The Children of Green Knowe_ , by L.M. Boston, a childhood favorite of mine and a great influence on me (though Kurt would like to put in a caveat about the rather cringeworthy stereotypical-for-the-time portrayal of Roma people, and I'd totally have to agree with him).

* * *

After all the misery and then the darkness, an interlude followed of the most lovely peace. Nothing hurt him, Loki never felt sick, he merely floated on a wonderful sea of blissful sleep, or something much akin to sleep, and on the few occasions he opened his eyes someone he loved gazed back at him with only kindness in his or her face.

It was a thing of perfection, to feel so comfortable, so rested, so loved. Loki suspected he had been rather thoroughly drugged. Not that it mattered to him, particularly, in that moment.

He sang a bit of that odd song that often came on the Pandora-box, the one he liked so much, with the many, many voices twined round and about one another in such intricate ways…

_Nothing really matters,_  
_Anyone can see,_  
_Nothing really matters,_  
_Nothing really matters… to me…_

He distinctly heard Tony snicker somewhere quite close by, and felt the soft caress of Kurt’s special hand upon his brow.

“Was that… ' _Bohemian Rhapsody'_?" Kurt asked.

“Oh, you betcha.” Tony laughed again, but then kissed Loki’s mouth so sweetly the laughter did not sting. “You go ahead and sing all the Classic Rock you want, my darling wasted baby. Just don’t strain your gorgeous voice, okay?”

And then, filled to overflowing with love for those, beside his children and his brother, he cared for most in all the Realms, Loki sank deeply into slumber once again.

When he woke at last to greater awareness, Big Blue, Dr. Hank McCoy, stood beside his bed—an infirmary bed, not that which he commonly shared with Tony--one huge warm hand on Loki’s shoulder.

Loki blinked a time or two, accustoming his eyes to the dim room lights, and also to the brighter reds and greens, the spots and lines which he presumed monitored the functions of his body.

“Hank? What is the time?” His voice sounded amusing, small and scratchy, like the voice of some far more diminutive creature than himself, perhaps a prickly woodland creature such as a hedgehog, if such a beast should be gifted with the speech of gods or men.

“Just past midnight, Loki. Here…” His physician spooned ice chips into Loki’s mouth, allowing them to fully melt before he followed the action with a second offering. “Let’s see how that suits you, shall we?”

Loki lay relishing the cold and wet on his tongue, the way even that slight moisture seemed to restore his thirsting tissues to plump fullness most wonderfully.

“It suits me very well,” he said. “I do not feel sick or unwell at all, only sadly ashamed at how cross I have been with everyone. Do they forgive me, Hank? I have not meant to be as I was. It was only that I felt so miserable when there was also so very much to be accomplished.”

“Oh, Loki.” Hank rubbed his shoulder soothingly with that vast blue hand. “All your loved ones know how ill you’ve been. Most people get cranky when they don’t feel well. Didn’t you know that?”

Loki shook his head. The motion made him feel slightly tipsy, as when he’d been a boy, and not knowing his limits, drank overmuch of mead. The sensation made him laugh a little, it had become so unfamiliar over the years.

“It’s the medicine,” Hank said, stroking Loki’s cheek with the backs of two furry fingers. “Feel a little bit drunk, don’t you?”

“Only a little,” Loki confessed. He took hold of Hank’s great hand in his two far more slender ones, fitting the curve of his benefactor’s palm once more to his own warm cheek. “You have been so kind to me, dear friend. So kind. How shall I ever repay to you this goodness and generosity?”

Hank pulled up the room’s one large and sturdy chair, perching on the back of it with his enormous and quite interesting feet on the cushioned seat, just as Kurt often did, though Kurt would be also as likely to perch with most-perfect balance on the back alone. Hank studied Loki with serious blue-grey eyes, his hand still held between Loki’s.

“You know what I believe you needed as much as my medicines, dear boy?” Hank asked kindly. “Actually, I should say, my medicines and to have that nasty wound of yours cleaned. You seemed to greatly need a couple of days just to shut off that fantastical brain of yours, not to worry, not to fear, not to care for anyone else ahead of yourself. You needed to rest and only rest. You were worn out, Loki. This isn’t Asgard. None of us, except maybe your brother, have that gift of boundless energy you once enjoyed.” He spooned a third helping of the ice chips into Loki’s mouth. “We eat. We sleep. We hydrate. You have many gifts, son, and you may be able to hold out longer than the rest of us, but you can’t avoid those basic needs, especially if you want to feel well, or to get your magic working properly. I’d bet you’ve now begun to feel a great deal better than you did.”

Loki nodded, his peacefulness undisturbed by Hank’s kind lecture. Hank always lectured, as his usual mode of discourse, though never unkindly—to him, at least.

On the other hand, Hank oft-times became very stern with Tony indeed.

Despite working together in the past, as in the repairing of Kurt’s poor foot, Hank and Tony were, perhaps, not best suited to one another’s company.

"Like cheese and chalk," Loki murmured to himself. "Chalk and cheese."

"What's that, dear boy?"

"I am, perhaps, slightly squiffy still, from your most-excellent drugs," Loki said.

Hank smiled. His teeth were much like Kurt's, except very large and fierce, made for grinding and tearing. Kurt's would be sharper, Loki suspected.

"You're staring at my teeth, Loki. Is there a problem?"

"Not in the least, dear friend," Loki informed his benefactor. He lay with eyes half-open, sleepy and content, contemplating divers things. How "squiffy" was indeed the exact, perfect word to describe his current condition.

How someday he must shapeshift to try on such teeth, Kurt's and Hank's, seeing which set he liked best.

How his Tony might well have provoked Hank from time to time, as his belovéd tended, now and then, to provoke many people.

He had even overheard Hank once say to his fiancé, “Where is it written, Stark, that you must constantly be such a smart-ass?” which was not all the physician’s accustomed manner of speech.

“Lingering squiffiness aside, Loki, your numbers have certainly improved. I think you’re actually going to get this infection licked.”

Loki stared at him in horror, until Hank gave a sudden belly-laugh.

“That’s idiom, Loki, and badly-used idiom at that. Your body will be able to fight and conquer the infection, I ought to have said.”

“ _Nornir_ be thanked,” Loki answered, with fervor, though he remained too sleepy to be as revolted as he properly ought to have been by the image Hank’s words evoked in his head. "I strongly feel I should greatly dislike to be licked in such--or, in fact, any-- circumstances."

Hank fed him a fourth spoonful of the chips, as if in apology for the slip.

“What I meant to tell you is this, your body finally has decided to go after the infection this time. Your fever’s nearly gone and the incision is remaining clean. I’ve reviewed your scans and this Watson follow did an excellent job despite the working conditions. I’d like to shake his hand, actually. I don’t believe there’d have been much trouble except, as I’ve said, your body had simply had enough. I prescribe much less stress and much more food in your future. Will you listen to me, my friend? Take care of our dear Loki?”

“I… Will I…?” He was afraid to ask the question he must ask, knowing if the answer was negative, the fault could only be his.

Loki rested a trembling hand over Hank’s huge, firm, hairy one again, hoping his eyes would ask for him the words he found himself unable to voice.

“Dear boy.” Hank's palms cupped his cheeks gently. “Dear boy, listen to me. Based on what I’ve seen, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to carry Tony’s no-doubt obstreperous children—but in the future. Are you listening, Loki? Do you hear me? Your body has suffered devastating injuries, and for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, your pregnancies are terribly hard on you, much harder than they are on most people. Here’s my advice: enjoy the family you have already. Enjoy your friends. Enjoy your life. Start out with gentle exercise when you’re ready. Eat. Forget those Nimrods back in Asgard and those hooligans upstairs. Forgive yourself, son. Will you do that?”

“I worry yet what will happen if I do not give Tony an heir to seal his line,” Loki confessed. “A son of his own blood, not another man’s violence-gotten bastard.”

Hank briefly put a hand over his eyes, and Loki knew he had distressed his healer and benefactor.

“I am sorry,” he said in a small voice. “Hank, please, will you forgive me? I, myself, view not my most-loved younglings in that light. To me they are dearer than life. But to another…? Hank, I know not. Often, unmeaning, I misspeak, hard as I try to understand your ways. It is not done intentionally.” That was a poor excuse, Loki knew, but the only one he had to offer.

Hank’s hand lowered, gently brushing back Loki’s tumbled hair, that the physician might better view his face.

“I’m not angry with you, son. Why should I be angry with you? All I want is for you to feel well, and to really settle into our world, confusing as I’m sure it can be. My advice? Talk to Kurt. Ask him everything you want and need to ask, whatever comes into your head, whenever you need to ask it, whenever you are confused. When Kurt has answered you in his wise, honest and kind way, when you’re better informed, talk to Tony about your concerns. Both of you need to get things out in the open. Tony needs to understand what you want, what you fear, what you expect.”

“Tony loves me,” Loki said. “He treats me with bountiful sweetness.” Sleepiness had begun to creep over him again in earnest.

“Of course he loves you,” Hank replied, “Except…”

“To hear these words gives me joy,” Loki said. Or intended to say, before he was once more overwhelmed by the soft, warm darkness.

He woke many hours later, it seemed, not in his own bed still, as he, for some reason, kept expecting, but again in the bed in the infirmary he had occupied all along, as he ought to have remembered from the machines and sensors that kept him company. He laughed at his own muddled thoughts of earlier hours.

Most of his sleepiness had gone, and with it the sense of malaise. He felt calm, rested, nearly well, as if going on with the activities of his life would no longer be to him a wretched burden.

Kurt smiled at him from the end of the bed, where he perched upon the rail. “ _Guten Morgen, lieber Freund_. You are certainly looking greatly improved.”

“I feel greatly improved,” Loki answered. “Come cuddle with me?”

Kurt flipped off the bed-rail, ever-graceful as was his way, landing softly beside him, as Loki edged over to make him room. He slipped beneath the covers, engulfing Loki in his gentle warmth, his tail lying across Loki’s abdomen in a soft curve like a smile.

“I enjoy to watch you flip through the air,” Loki said to him. “Everything about you, most-loved friend, is of beauty to me.”

Kurt smiled and kissed the top of his head. “Everything about you, dear little brother, is beautiful to me as well.”

Kurt was most likely only being kind to say such a thing unto him in return, as was his way, but every word Loki had spoken felt absolutely true. Nothing about his dearest friend was not beautiful, from his messy blue-black curls to the soles of his special feet, most of all his kindness, his cleverness, his resourcefulness, his bravery and deep, warm, undeniable love. What lay between them was not sexual—he had Tony and desired no other in that way, Kurt had Logan, love of his life—it was not the adoration he had felt for Myrddin, or even the sweet, true child-friendship he once shared with Sigyn (though that had been Loki’s initial comparison), it was not the love and near-worship he’d felt so needfully for his mother, Frigga.

Kurt would not fail him in ways large and small, as his mother so often had done, Loki saw now. His love for Frigga was no less, but it was tangled up with the fact that he had not always been able to depend upon her.

He knew he might depend on Kurt. Always. There was no question between them of any slight, any betrayal, even the slightest lack of regard.

Loki wrapped his arms tightly around his friend and held him in return. Kurt had a lovely smell, always, a bit like the bergamot-scent of Earl Grey tea, but not. A complicated, furry, warm, clean smell that spoke to him, always, of home and of being loved.

“Are you weary, Kurt?” Loki asked. “Did you find good sleep once you left me?”

“I found very good sleep,” Kurt answered. “It’s nearly nine in the morning now, and I left before midnight, since Tony was with me, and had to be spirited away.”

He pulled back a little, so that Loki might see his face. Kurt was grinning hugely, much like the smiling devil emoji, of the aethers, brought to life. “After all, a groom can’t see his groom on their wedding day, can he?”

Loki sucked in a breath so deep he nearly set himself coughing. “Oh, Kurt, I had forgotten, I think! The days, I mean. The passage of days.”

Kurt took Loki’s hand in his own special hand, still smiling brightly, and it struck him for the first time—Loki could not believe his previous blindness!—that Kurt was most undoubtedly _ergi_ , as he was _ergi_ , in the best of possible ways, and that it was not a weakness at all, a disgusting thing, as had so long been taught to him, but a source of graciousness and great strength.

The trueness of Kurt’s emotions, his deep kindness, his readiness to comfort, touch, feel what another felt, which was called empathy, all stemmed from his _ergi_ ness. Was that the proper word?

Loki thought not, but it scarcely mattered.

What mattered, truly, was that he had been lied to all his long life. To be so, as he was, and Kurt was, had not been given to him as a curse but as a gift, one he had been taught not to value by ones who were the purest fools, incapable, in their blindness, of telling treasure from refuse.

"Their loss," Tony would have said, and that too was the truth.

Loki found himself beaming back at his dear friend, meeting the brightness of Kurt’s smile with one his own, showing Kurt his thoughts.

Kurt studied them as a man might study emeralds or rubies, turning them to and fro to study their facets.

“Yes,” Kurt said simply, clearly having known all along, “I’m glad you see it, Lo. Did you know it's a part of what I find beautiful in you?"

Well-contented, Loki drowsed again, perhaps for the space of half an hour, in Kurt’s arms, but then became, increasingly, what Tony called “antsy”—and, indeed the sensation greatly resembled that of ants marching up and down his skin.

Loki could bear the inactivity no longer. He must rise. There was no hope for it.

_I am awakened and I love you!_ he called into Tony’s mind. _Belovéd_ , hjarta hjarta minn, _do we_ _wed today?_

_Lok?_ A great flood of Tony’s response returned to him: astonishment, joy, concern, all twined round with the tenderest love. _Are you sure? Like, sure sure? Who’s there with you? Hank? Kurt?_

_Kurt is here. We have been cuddling._

Tony laughed inside his head. _Yeah, that’s what a guy wants to hear on his wedding day!_

There was no anger in his mind, however, only amusement and, regardless, it was not a thing Loki would apologize for, ever, in his life—his deep love for Kurt—any more than he would apologize for his great, if different, love for Tony.

Some things were sacred unto his heart, and should not be denied.

_Okay, you have Kurt check you out—thoroughly, mind—and give me a jingle. If everything’s a go, I’ll clear out to the Ritz-Carlton with Hap and Logan. Remember, I'm Central Park Suite,_  you're Royal Suite, and never the twain shall meet until it's time. For luck, okay?

_The Royal Suite?_ Loki sang into his head, bubbling with internal laughter:

_Let me be your ruler,_  
_You can call me Queen Bee_  
_And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule._  
_Let me live that fantasy._

_Oookay, then.._. Tony paused, a complicated swell of emotion again flooding from his into Loki’s mind. _Christ, you sound like yourself, my sweet baby, my sweetest Queen Bee--see, now you'll be sorry, because I will call you by that name! You sound just like yourself. That’s gotta be the best news of all._

Loki released unto him in return the merest trickle of his own great feeling, knowing the whole altogether, vast as it was, might well have overwhelmed Tony’s reason.

“Tony knows great joy,” Loki told Kurt.

“Of course he does,” his dear friend answered. “He has you to love him.”

 

“At this moment,” Kurt told Tony over the phone, “Your fiancé is approximately as excited as an eight-year-old on Christmas Eve. I don’t believe there is a force on Midgard that could hold him back from whatever he sets his mind to do.”

Kurt’s phrasing didn’t exactly settle Tony’s own mind.

“But is he all right, Kurt, that’s what I want to know. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not completely clueless where Loki is concerned. I don’t want him to be miserable but white-knuckling things for my sake. You know me, I’m not such an elegant kind of dude. This party’s mostly for him.”

“Then I can safely tell you, Tony, _mein Freund_ ,” Kurt answered, and Tony could hear the smile in his voice, “That while I believe Hank was quite right to forbid Paris at this time, Loki will enjoy himself hugely this afternoon. He is very excited, as I’ve said, very happy, and nearly well, and to postpone things would disappoint and hurt him far more than to go forward. We will all watch over him, won’t we? And make sure it never becomes too much? Just imagine, for him, the joy of this: being surrounded and wished well by family and friends, at a beautiful party that’s all meant for his joy, not someone else’s, for the first time in all his years of life.”

To think about that too hard made a lump form in Tony’s throat, so instead he told Kurt, “You’re a good guy, buddy. A fantastic friend. Thank you for our lives. Thank you for… I guess… everything?”

Kurt gave his gentle, amused laugh. “Surely, not everything, _mein Freund_.”

Tony pretended to think for a minute. “Nope. Sorry. Uh-unh. Pretty sure it’s still everything. Wanna talk to Shorty?”

“If I might,” Kurt answered, laughing again.

Tony passed the phone to Logan with a grin, moving away a little to give the man some privacy while he and Kurt talked.

On the whole, the burly X-Man's general demeanor could more or less be summed up by the words, "grim" and "unsmiling" (with maybe an evil smirk thrown in now and then to make other people nervous). When he was with Kurt, talking to Kurt, though, everything changed. Really changed.

Tony guessed the reason behind Logan’s grim looks was the grim life he’d had to go with them—a guy who’d fought in the fucking Civil War, then whatever war cropped up in front of him afterward, decade after decade after decade, a man always moving from place to place, hiding the truth of what he was, isolated from friendship, sure he would never be understood, much less loved, by anyone.

Then came Professor Baldy with a job for him to do, and a bunch of other people who were more like him than they were different, folks who just about got him for the first time in his life, among them this adorable, geeky, huge-hearted German kid. A fucking circus flier, an acrobat, all lightness and air, flamboyance and shyness mingled. Nineteen years old to Logan's hundred-and-whatever, full of faith and goodness and wisdom beyond his youth--oh, and blue and furry to boot, standing out a mile wherever he went.

“I fell,” Logan had told Tony once, over beers on the terrace, “Like a trap door opened under my feet. Worse. I’d ‘a’ noticed the trap door in a heartbeat. Fuzzy kinda crept up on me.”

He’d let out one of his dark, huffing laughs. “Cyke—Scott Summers, that was--and I nearly came to blows. He thought I was tryin’ ta make time with Jeanie, his girl. Jeanie was tryin’ ta play matchmaker with me ‘n’ the elf. Cyke as usual couldn’t get holda a clue with a catcher’s mitt. Couldn’t bring myself ta enlighten his punk ass, either.”

A gradual smile spread across the mutant's broad, hard face. “Came a time I found out Kurt loved me too. How’s about that?”

He popped the top off a longneck with one of his deadly claws, passed it to Tony, pop-topped another for himself.

“You find that one, the one who makes ya want ta be an actual good guy, not just a bad guy playin' on the good guys’ team, ya hold onto him. He’s the one who'll heal ya.”

Both of them had looked back through the glass doors and seen Loki and Kurt snuggling the jammies-clad kids on the couch as Loki read them their bed-time story.

Tony sat too far away to hear with his own ears, as Logan did, so he listened to the rise and fall of Loki’s expressive voice inside his own head, caught up, as the children were, in his lover’s spell.

“’ _There were vases filled everywhere with queer flowers—_ ‘” Loki read.“ _'Dry winter twigs out of which little tassels and rosettes of flower petals were bursting, some yellow, some white, some purple. They had an exciting smell, almost like something to eat, and they looked as if they had been produced by magic, as if someone had said, “Abracadabra! Let these sticks burst into flower!_ ’”

Loki waved a lazy and graceful hand at the big-ass vase filled with long-ass twisty sticks Tony's former designer had for some reason stood in the corner by the fireplace—to help make it look like a real person actually lived there, Tony guessed.

A sparkle of gold followed, then Loki’s laughing voice, “' _Abracadabra! Let these sticks burst into flower_!'”

And so they did, to the children’s complete delight, vivid yellow, white and violet.

“Our beautiful boys," Logan had said, with a profound and completely unexpected tenderness coloring his voice. “Our beautiful, beautiful boys.”

They’d clinked bottles solemnly, sealing their toast to the best thing either of them had ever known, Tony remembered, as Logan, in the here-and-now, hung up the phone.

“So, gettin’ married today, Stark.” There was a grin in there somewhere, even if deeply hidden, because Logan’s eyes twinkled.

“Yup, kinda looks that way,” Tony answered, equally deadpan, though the huge ball of joy in the pit of his stomach seemed to radiate through him like some clean, non-depletable, delightfully warm new source of energy, radiating from his hair follicles, to his fingernails, to the tips of his toes.

Today he was going to marry Loki. Loki was going to marry him. The world in all its general fuckitude and uncertainty could just piss off for a few hours.

Today, thank you very damn much, Tony Stark fully intended to have his fairy tale, and wed his handsome prince.


	9. Countdown: Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ensconced in his hotel suite overlooking Central Park, Tony experiences pre-wedding jitters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You Shook Me All Night Long"is a song by the band AC/DC, from their 1980 album _Back in Black_.
> 
> " _With a snow white pillow for my big, fat head_ "is a line from the song " _Big Time_ " by Peter Gabriel, from his 1986 album _So_.
> 
>   _"That kind of luxe just ain’t for us_ … is yet another line from " _"Royals_ " by Lorde (as sung by Loki in the previous chapter).
> 
>  _également_ =equally (French) 
> 
> An Erlenmeyer flask is a glass vessel that's wide at the bottom and narrows to a long neck, specifically intended for swirling chemicals.
> 
>  _Ain’t too proud to beg, sweet darlin'_ is a line from The Temptations' classic song, " _Ain't Too Proud to Beg_ " from their 1966 album, _Gettin' Ready_.
> 
>  _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_ , written by the late, great Douglas Adams, was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978. One of the lessons we learn from the _Hitchhikers Guide_ is that no traveler should ever leave home without a towel.
> 
>  " _Mazel tov_ " is a Hebrew/Yiddish expression of good wishes for an important occasion, such as a wedding. The phrase entered American English around 1862.

* * *

Tony turned away, blinking, from the bank of ultra-clear mirrors in the Central Park Suite’s somewhat-beyond-luxuriously-appointed master bedroom. His bow-tie remained untied, because his vision had somehow turned too blurry (and his hands too shaky) to do anything like a decent job of tying it. Ultra-clear mirrors didn’t actually do a guy much good, he'd discovered, when he ultra couldn’t see.

His heartbeat also appeared to be attempting a syncopated steel-drum version of “ _You Shook Me All Night Long,_ ” and it wasn’t so much that he couldn’t breathe as that he felt too _scared_ to breathe at the moment. Also, all the bedding on the king-sized bed behind him was white. _Blindingly_ white, some might say, Tony included. The bed also possessed unnecessary numbers of pillows, both regular and throw.

“ _’With a snow white pillow for my big, fat head_ ’,” he sang-gasped under his (practically nonexistent) breath.

Tony wondered about the possibility of (maybe) throwing up, and thanked his stars that he'd decided to skip lunch. And breakfast. He told himself it was probably the giant blinding-white bed giving him a case of snow-blindness that made his sight blur. If, like Thor, he’d possessed the steely gaze of an Asgardian, he would have been fine.

" _That kind of luxe just ain’t for us_ …" played in Loki’s silky voice through his head. Not that Loki could actually be forced into using the word “ain’t” to save his own life. The children’s lives, maybe, but not his own. He would go to his own doom with defiantly correct grammar on his lips.

 _Get a grip now, Stark_ , Tony commanded himself. _Get a fucking grip._

He really hoped Loki found himself too preoccupied to absorb, by his usual osmosis, what he felt at the moment, because the last thing Tony wanted was for his intended to think he had second thoughts or regrets. He didn’t feel like this because he felt, or thought, in any part of himself, that they'd made a single wrong choice. He only panicked because he wanted so terribly to get things right.

Tony longed to text Loki, if only to find out whether his bed gave him snow-blindness too—but then he thought of a memory they’d shared once, of Loki in a sledge with Thor, flying over snowfields beneath the Northern Lights, his burned-out sight only recently restored--and talking about blindness, snow or otherwise, with the knowledge that Loki had been horribly, painfully blind for just under a quarter of his long life, no longer seemed like such a good idea.

Anyway, he’d texted his fiancé earlier, to ask, _How’s your suite? Nice?_

 _I have an orange silk cushion with a silver elephant upon it,_ Loki replied. Nothing else. Chances were, Loki had been interrupted before he could say more, called away to some all-important, grooming-related task, the way Tony himself had kept getting called away for the last three-plus hours.

On the other hand, he might just be acting like his usual maddening, adorable Loki self.

Now Tony wondered if he’d go to his grave (surely not a distant event, with the way his heart seemed determined to imitate one of Thor's fiercer thunderstorms) not knowing whether orange silk cushions with silver elephants were a good thing or a bad thing. Probably good, given that Loki had recently discovered Bollywood. And was, also, Loki.

Though possibly _not_ good, since Loki was, still, Loki, and thus one could never predict.

Tony informed himself, firmly, once and for all, that he would not, under any circumstances, either throw up or lose it in any way, big or small, and that his blurry sight resulted from allergies, or fatigue. Or good stress,maybe. Positive stress!

He definitely, definitely couldn't possibly be tearing up, even though he didn’t think he’d felt so emotionally unstable in his life.

 _But in a good way_ , Tony reminded himself firmly.

In a good way, right?

Damn, he just hoped Loki had managed not to lose his shit at the same rate Tony seemed to be losing his.

Tony crossed to the closet, removing the cedar-wood hanger with his Hugo Boss jacket hung on it. He stood unmoving for what seemed like years, the jacket cradled in his arms, the texture of the high-quality super-fine wool comforting under his fingertips. Tony liked real things. Measurable things of the real world, and well-made things, and good tailoring. His suit combined all three, and in an odd way made him feel better.

“Really not bad, is it?” he said, slipping on the suit-coat at last. What better way to show everybody his state of total okayness, and to pretend he'd only been thinking about his tux this whole time. He looked down to do up the single button, not wanting, for a second, for his face to show, not until he got every last bit of this under control.

Ignoring the fact that his best man, with his mutant hyper-senses, could undoubtedly smell it on him anyway, the same way a dog smells fear.

“Dear Mr. Stark, allow me…” said Mr. Pierre, Loki’s friend and tailor-supreme, who’d waited patiently through Tony’s latest mini-meltdown (number nine of the day and counting), and now stepped in to render aid.

Pierre (first name? last name?—Tony had no idea) was a small man, two or three inches shorter than Tony himself, with a halo of glistening white curls and a serene expression. His small, nimble fingers tied Tony’s dangling tie swiftly, expertly, and with far more elegance than he ever could have achieved for himself. He then stepped back, regarding the perfection of his work—beaming, suddenly, all over his handsome, mahogany-toned face.

“Dr. Loki will be so very happy to see you, Mr. Stark,” he said, in a soft, musical voice, French-accented from some part of the Caribbean Tony couldn’t quite place. “So very happy, to have such a handsome groom, who loves him so dearly.”

“I owe it all to you, Mr. Pierre.” Midway through the process, Tony had begun to suspect the self-effacing Brooklyn tailor with the genius hands of possessing magical powers to rival Loki’s own. He’d flown through their alterations in record time, with a skill that asshole Cristobal couldn’t have equaled in his wildest dreams. “Thank you for doing the work so perfectly, and so quickly.”

“It is my very great pleasure, Mr. Stark," said Mr. Pierre. "Now I will go to Dr. Loki, to make certain all is perfect with him, également.” He shook hands all around, then left, as noiselessly as he’d arrived.

“That’s a good guy, boss. A real good guy. He did ya proud.” Happy took a seat on the edge of the shining bed, phone in hand. “All right, so’s you know, my guys say all Dr. Boss’s folks from across the pond got in great. They’re all checked into their rooms, getting settled. Even… uh… Sherlock. Dr. and Mrs. Watson, and the younger Mr. Giles wrangled him, though the older Mrs. Giles offered to help.”

Tony imagined Rupert’s deep, rich voice intoning, “Previously, on _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , Buffy, having wrestled a consulting detective into submission, prepared to attend a wedding.”

He also tried then, in a muddled way, to remember who all the “across the pond folks” might be, who Loki had invited. Sherlock, of course, John and Mary Watson, Martha Hudson, Rupert and Elizabeth Giles and their three kids, plus Rupert’s son Sebastian and his wife (Celine? Celeste? something along those lines). He wondered if they’d have the dubious pleasure of Mycroft’s company, or Anthea (aka Morgana’s), or if those two shady characters found themselves too busy running Britain (and possibly the world).

Would the Crowned Heads of Europe, Loki’s “cousins” be attending (and what was the story behind all that)? Had he forgotten anyone else?

From this side of the pond there'd be a shit-ton of mutants, Logan and Kurt's folks, who Loki'd gotten friendly with on his frequent trips to Salem Center: Hank and Kitty, of course, tall, striking Ororo of the white mohawk, a red-headed girl named Marie with a cute, honey-soaked Southern drawl, who Kurt referred to as his "sister," Northstar (a good friend of Loki's, who nonetheless mocked Tony mercilessly every time they met) and his husband. He'd heard a few University folks were coming, at least Dr. Helen Dayton, Loki's department head, and the head of Classics, who continuously tried to poach Loki away from Linguistics for his own evil purposes (or possibly because of Loki's flawless command of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek).

Prof. Nels Lars Nelson, from the office next door to Loki's, probably couldn't be avoided, much as Tony would've like to make that happen. There'd be publishing people, too, art people, possibly Mr. Mayor and Mrs. Mayor and about 900 young kids from Loki's Club of Boys and Girls.

Tony laughed a little at himself—he could totally remember who Loki invited, but had basically no idea who'd be sitting on his own side. Okay, the Avengers (all of them, minus one). Board members (about fifty per cent, Sam Torgern not among them, had nothing better to do with their Saturday), a few guys he’d known in college, the ones he had his P.A. send cards to at Christmas or Chanukkah, a handful of his cousins (all from Maria's side of the family), with _their_ families, people that Tony hadn’t actually seen since their own weddings, his ancient, cranky, socially-uninhibited Great-Aunt Agnes, who could more or less be counted on, at some point in the proceedings, to grab Loki’s ass, if not worse.

No Starks, because Stark hadn't even been Howard's real name, and whoever his parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins might have been, he'd cut them away like dead branches from an old tree.

Also no Bruce. No Rhodey. Actual friends a little thin on the ground on his side, and most of them already in the wedding party.

Good friends there, though. Really, really good friends. Faithful friends.

But, damn it all to hell, he still wanted Bruce. He could do this without Rhodey, Tony guessed, even if it was a _huge_ stretch, but he wanted Bruce.

Tony knew that same want had to be one reason for his ongoing crazies—his emotions had turned into a big bubble of happy/excited/scared, balanced uneasily on a tiny-but-volatile bubble of furious/hurt.

He’d even stopped by Bruce’s lab on his way out of the tower. Bruce had been swishing green liquid around in a big Erlenmeyer flask, some shit that bubbled even though it wasn’t over heat.

Bruce hummed tunelessly as the bubbles popped at the surface.

“Oh, hey,” he said to Tony, perfectly friendly. “Thought you’d be gone already.”

“In a minute,” Tony answered. “You could still come, you know. ‘ _Ain’t too proud to beg, sweet darlin’."_

“Nope.” Bruce stretched out his arms as if cheerfully awaiting crucifixion, still swishing away. “Nothing to wear. Like Cinderella.”

“I could be your Blue Fairy. Spring for a really excellent suit to go?”

“I don’t want you to be my Blue Fairy.” Bruce sighed. “God, Tony, I want to use my manners here, but you’re forcing my hand. Bluntly, I think your intended falls somewhere on the spectrum between unstable, weirdo, and psycho. I don’t want you to marry him. Since you insist on doing it anyway, I’m expressing my regrets, mailing you a toaster and otherwise staying away. That plain enough for you, bro?”

“We have a toaster,” Tony said. “I’d prefer to have a friend… bro.”

“I’ll send Loki a teacup in his favorite china pattern, then. Better take it. It’s the best you’re gonna get from me, Tony.”

“You were nice to him the other day. Loki said. He told me you ‘fetched an odd-shaped pink receptacle of vomiting’ for him.”

“Thor did the hand-cupped-in-front-of-the-mouth thing with him. Like a mom. I was supposed to stand by and watch that?”

“And that’s it? Not a crumb of kindness or fellow-feeling?”

“Nope. Nary a crumb.” Bruce's normally mobile mouth had frozen into a straight, hard, bitter line.

“You’re wrong, Bruce,” Tony answered quietly. “Wrong like a wrong thing drinking wrong-juice, and someday you’re going to have to eat it, okay? And I don’t want to lose you, buddy. Not like this.”

He felt as if they stood on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, hollering words that neither one could hear properly across the gap.

Bruce shrugged. “Your choice, my friend.”

“I am your friend, asshole.”

“Like I said, your…”

“Don’t, Bruce. Please.”

Bruce poured a few milliliters of self-bubbling toxic waste into a beaker, where it started to smoke.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Tony couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes,” Bruce answered shortly. “ _Mazel Tov_. Have a nice day.”

 _I kind of hate you at the moment,_ Tony thought, but all he said was, “Yeah. You too. I’d rather you didn’t blow up the tower.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Bruce said dryly, and turned away.

 

Happy let out a long, low whistle, giving a little tug to the shoulders of Tony’s suit jacket to square up everything to perfection. “Well, thank you, Mr. Pierre, miracle worker!” He gave a nod toward the Mirror of Ultra-Clarity, where Tony, somewhat calmer by this point, finally managed to see himself. “Now look at that--there’s a guy worthy of marrying a handsome prince!”

“Ha!” Logan called out with evil glee from the next room, where the hotel had placed a telescope (which his eagle-eyed best man may or may not have been using) for observing the park below. From their suite, they could see the Shakespeare Garden, and the wedding set-up progress, perfectly.

“I think yer wedding planner’s losin’ her shit, Stark.” Logan gave an wicked chuckle. As a man beginning to plan his own wedding, to Kurt, he seemed to regard the proceedings with a kind of grim hilarity.

Having amused himself enough, Logan appeared in the doorway. “Hey, look at ya, Stark! Ain’t ya fancy!”

Tony regarded himself again in the glass. Okay, so maybe “fancy” wasn’t quite the word he’d have used, but… damn! He wasn’t exactly known for being ego-free, but, really… damn!

“Kinda beats the famous Hobbit-pants, huh, Hap? Quick, grab my phone.” Tony passed his StarkPhone to Happy, who had the longest reach, squeezing in with his groomsmen for the shot, arms around their shoulders.

They all yelled "cheese!" even Logan.

Click/flash!—all done.

There on the little screen even Logan looked genuinely happy, and Tony wouldn’t have thought he came in that flavor. Happy looked like the fucking Spirit of Christmas Present, he was beaming so hard over his big red face. Even with that, thanks to Mr. P., the three of them looked trim and dashing. They looked heroic, yet sophisticated.

Smiling to himself, he texted a copy over to Loki, along with the message, Luv u x1,000,000,000+.

 _Are the alphabetic keys of your mobile without function?_ Loki snarked back, as Tony had known he would. _How glad I am the numeric keys are not so afflicted!_

Tony laughed again, with a warm, ridiculous, squishy feeling inside him. _I love you a million times and more. Better, babe?_

 _I teased_ , Loki texted back. _You are the best and most-loved of fiancés, and beyond handsomeness_ , hjarta hjarta minn. _Say, please, to Logan and to Happy, how greatly I admire their own handsomeness, also, and with what warm gladness I welcome them to our Marriage Party. Also, belovéd, I miss you, and greatly anticipate our reunion._

All of this in about thirty seconds. Often Loki’s fingers actually blurred when he texted. Other times (and Tony couldn’t even figure out how he felt about this, from an engineering standpoint), Loki just thought the words into his phone.

Tony wondered if he was doing that now.

 _Miss you too, babe,_ he sent back. _How goes life in the Royal Suite? Any volcanoes erupting?_

 _Life is as a dream of a dream_ , Loki replied. _I send you this, though you are not allowed to see me, lest ill luck follow (though I believe not in such foolish superstition). Still, there is pleasure in allowing anticipation to grow._

A shot followed of Jorge, Thor and Kurt in the same pose Tony had adopted with Hap and Logan--with Kurt, who was a perfectly normal-sized guy, looking like a mop-headed plush toy between the two burly giants.

Although Jorge appeared huge and handsome in his gear, like someone who could maybe play Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s tougher, bigger brother in the movies, Thor (who, quite frankly, managed to rock all sorts of ridiculous outfits on a daily basis, and looked so good even in sweats it should have been against the law) looked hilarious in a tux. His suit appeared just as perfectly tailored as the rest of theirs, but there was something…

He looked like Bruce when he Hulked out, just before his pants exploded. He also resembled a giant golden-retriever puppy with a too-tight collar and an empty water dish.

 _LOL your brother in a suit_ , Tony texted back.

_Pity my poor Thor. Never before has he worn a tie, and great is his discomfort. Indeed, I find it difficult to regard him at the moment. He resembles some great, golden hound that pulls with foolish strength upon its lead._

Great minds thought alike, apparently.

It was sweet that Loki loved his bro too much to snicker at his expense (even if Thor did look like his eyes might pop dramatically out of his head at any moment, and the temptation must have been enormous). Tonym however, felt too benevolent toward the world in general to see Thor suffer. Besides which, he’d been awfully good to his little brother lately.

_What do you say, Lok? Change of plans? Any Asgardian finery handy, to put your poor bro out of his misery?_

_Concerned as I am to observe Midgardian Traditions…_ Loki began.

_I’m more concerned my bro-in-law not expire at the altar, quite frankly._

_My heart would know joy, seeing my dearest brother as I am wont to see him. Suitable garb may surely be swiftly sent for._

_Point taken_ , Tony answered. _Get him changed, okay? And how are you doing, my baby?_

_I have been meditating since Thor and I performed the ceremonies of cleansing and anointing. All went as was appropriate, and this gives me joy. I had not known…_

A longer than expected pause followed.

_Known what, babe?_

_If I would be found acceptable._ Tony could practically feel the shyness, the uncertainty in Loki’s text.

And… ceremonies of cleansing and anointing? It was the first Tony’d heard about that. He needed to have a talk—a gentle and loving talk, but a talk nonetheless--with his sweetie when all this was over.

_Never mind the goat entrails, babe. I find you acceptable. It’s the Midgardian way._

_The_ Nornir _must be petitioned, by one such as myself, even whilst on Midgard. I am a_ _seithrmathur, belovéd. O, fjandinn! I have not the right letters upon my mobile! Tony, will you not make me a telephone with the right letters, that I might speak properly? For Thor and the children also—it is maddening! What do you imagine my_ seithr _to be? And, also, we used not entrails._

_Umn… Colored glowy magic stuff?_

Tony could hear Loki’s stern-voice in his reply. _Merely the thread upon which the fabric of the Nine Realms is woven, Anthony. If all were ignorance and superstition, as you suppose, would I be as I am? For that, would you yet live this day?_

_Lok. Lok. Hey. I am sorry._

_I should not…_

_Babe, you’re stressed. You haven’t been well. And if there’s one thing I believe in, in the whole entire universe, it’s you. The entrails joke was me being an asshole. It was stupid and insensitive. I love you, my darling baby._

_And I love you,_ hjarta minn _._ _Forgive my foolish temper. Kurt says I now must lie down for half an hour’s time, in order to become composed._

_Smart Kurt._

_What will you do, my love?_

_We have telescopes and a perfect view of the Shakespeare Garden. We’ve taken turns spying on Carole Anne and her set-up guys. Lok, it’s so beautiful. Gonna love it!_

_I wish that many photographs be taken, for I shall see only your eyes._

If anyone else told him something like that, Tony would have instantly scoffed and called bullshit. Loki though… If he said the words, he meant them. Really meant them, from the depths of his gorgeous alien soul. And that’s what got scary sometimes, at the same time it was inspiring. How much Loki could love. How damn much he could feel. How could a mere Midgardian mortal’s emotions compare with that kind of intensity?

A blue demon emoji popped up on his screen, followed by three x’s. _All of us love the two of you beyond words. As _The Hitchhikers Guide_ says, _"Don’t Panic!_ "_

 

Clearly Kurt, sensing imminent meltdown, had wisely confiscated Loki’s phone.

 _Where’s my damn towel?_ Tony returned. _Then, xxx to you too, Fuzzy. You’re the best! Look after my baby, okay?_

 _Always,_ Kurt answered, and disconnected.

Tony found himself clutching the phone to his chest, teetering on the brink of… something once again.

“Stark?” Logan growled. It was a good-tempered, sympathetic kind of growl. Almost a fatherly growl—a “Papa Bear’s in the house, nothing to worry about here,” kind of sound.

“Boss, you okay?” Happy’s big hand gripped Tony’s shoulder comfortingly.

“No. Yes. God. I…” For maybe the first time in his life Tony felt drained dry of words. Completely drained. Like he’d have to eat about ten bowls of alphabet soup to put words back into himself again.

Alphabet soup made him think of Loki. Like his eating repertoire, Loki’s cooking repertoire continued to be fairly limited, but he often liked to make (and even actually eat) soup. Wordsmith that he was, he’d been utterly charmed to discover the existence of letter-shaped pasta, to the point it had become nearly the only kind of pasta he was willing to use in his soup-cookery.

The family would be eating lunch at the table together and words would come rising out of the soupy depths: little poems for Hela, jokes for Jöri, names of loved ones and simple nouns for Fen. Tony’s messages were often loving, sometimes inappropriate, sometimes goofy.

Only Loki, only his miraculous, irreplaceable love, could bring magic even to something as mundane as soup.

Tony found himself just standing there as if frozen, smile-crying, his phone still plastered to his chest as if it held Loki’s actual words inside it like an electronic treasure chest filled with precious digital jewels, the smile-crying gradually turning more into cry-crying than the reverse.

He was going to tear-stain his fucking shirt, but he couldn’t stop.

Tony started violently when Happy gave a sudden explosive laugh.

“Hey, know what you should do?” his old friend suggested. “Since we’re lookin’ so good? Text the pic we just took over to that creep Cristobal. Let him see us and weep. You should remind him, too, that it’s almost rent day. Enjoy a little petty revenge. Be a Groomzilla! It’ll give you extra courage, boss.”

Before he could change his mind, act his age, or rise above the occasion, Tony sent the picture.

Happy was right. It did feel good, in its small way, especially once he’d texted: _Mr. Cristobal! Example of how a real tailor does his work. Happy Wedding Day to me! Happy rent day to you on Monday!_

“Way to throw a little shade, boss.” Happy laughed again, apparently satisfied with having done his work of distracting Tony away from the brink of… something, for about the millionth time in their years together.

Hap could have taught an advanced-level college course on the ways and moods of Tony Stark. Logan just shook his head, though his trademark evil smirk said he’d also been pretty damn amused. Logan didn’t tolerate fools, lightly or otherwise.

“Always gotta have the last word, huh, Stark? Hopeless.”

Hopeless, maybe, but a little further away from losing it, a whole lot closer to, as Loki would say, “composed.”

Tony stole a last look in the mirror. He had no idea how it happened, but he looked… fucking handsome. Handsome, when he’d always felt like he had to slide by, more or less, on charisma, and being really, really smart). He couldn’t actually take claim for any of it. He’d been Gentleman’s Facialed and Gentleman’s-Manicured and not even allowed to trim his own beard, much less touch his own hair, but…

He imagined Loki walking up the aisle, seeing him, his gorgeous guy… Imagined Loki’s delight…

His hands had (again) started shaking a little, and he really wanted a drink, but he had no intention of allowing himself one, not now, when he wanted to be perfect for his prince.

Fuck, that he was nervous went without saying. He was _nervous_ nervous. So nervous his nerves had nerves.

In the end, he knew for a fact, it wasn’t even the commitment pushing him into this series of minifreak-outs. That wasn’t even a question. Not having that bond, not having his family—that would have been the scary thing. He just wanted so, so badly to get this right.

He didn’t mean just the wedding, either. He meant getting this huge, fucking, confusing thing called life right for a change, wanting with his whole heart to be a great husband, the best dad of all time, to be everything Howard hadn’t managed, or even ever tried to be.

No, that wasn’t right, even. _Wanted_ was a word for wimps. _Needed_ was the word Tony searched for. He needed to get this right, needed to be the better man, needed to prove to Loki and the kids he’d always be the one who loved and cared for them, that there were no more special, precious, wanted beings in all the worlds, so far as Tony Stark was concerned.

When he came down to it, Tony felt a little like the Grinch on the day his heart grew three sizes. It was a very weird feeling, not completely comfortable—maybe even painful.

Definitely painful, actually.

He’d spent so many years guarding that heart, keeping it on a kind of restricted-feeling plan to limit its size, letting it know it wasn’t meant for certain things, it needed to be safe.

Always, always, it was better to keep safe, right? Not his body, bodies healed, but the heart was a far more perilous thing.

But then a tortured god plummeted like a meteor right into Central Park, practically at his doorstep. There were three tiny, strange, beautiful babies, and a Fauxlicarrier, and a cell. There was fear and danger and the almost certain chance of death… and there was Loki, who was so not at all what Tony had thought from their previous encounters.

Loki the consummate actor, who saved the world by pretending to be what he most certainly was not, and blamed himself that he hadn’t saved it well enough to live up to his own impossible standards for himself.

Beautiful, broken Loki, whose heart was huge and bright and everywhere, like never-ending fireworks.

For about two seconds, maybe, somewhere in the early days, Tony had thought about turning away from all that brightness, continuing on as he’d been.

It would have been more convenient.

It would have been safe.

He couldn’t do it.

Convenient was for microwave popcorn. Safe got you nothing, ever, except maybe regret. Without Loki’s light, without the kids and the life they shared together, he’d feel like he was freezing and dying all alone on a remote floating iceberg.

He’d feel like the loneliest man in the world, and he couldn’t face that feeling, not any more.

His newly-grown heart longed for all of the hokey stuff: the kisses and cuddles and family movie nights; the school plays and the wearing of a fake-fur Santa hat on Christmas Eve; cheering at Hela’s soccer games and using glue sticks to paste words on a tri-fold presentation board for the science fair (even though a series of proper display screens would look so much more cool). He wanted to go to his grave knowing he'd been loved completely by the people he loved completely in return.

He wanted this day to be so special for Loki. So perfect. Both for the brave, brilliant, remarkable man Loki he'd become and for the sad little god-boy he’d been, the boy with no birthday, the boy who only received presents that were really veiled criticisms, the boy called “ugly,”  
“ergi,” ”strange,” “weak.”

The little god-boy who’d been taught again and again that he wasn’t special, that he didn’t mean anything except as a tool for some asshole to use at his whim.

The little god-boy who never understood why everyone called his brother “good,” while they only ever called him “evil.”

Tony wanted Loki to know he meant everything in the world. Absolutely everything.

He’d even found a poem for him (okay, Pepper helped, but Tony himself found the right one in the end) for Anita to read at the start of the ceremony.

When Kurt bamfed in with the boys, having previously dressed them to perfection in their little white suits (the benefits of facials being pretty much lost on Kurt’s blue-velvet fur), Tony's suspicions about Mr. Pierre’s sorcery were confirmed. It was simply not possible for two little boys to look so damn cute without magic involved. It could only be supernatural.

But there they were, squeaky-clean, with fresh haircuts and loving, small faces, so handsome, so unbelievably lovable.

His beautiful, beautiful sons.

Tony suddenly wanted to plunk down on the ottoman behind him and weep for real, just from the sheer, sudden rightness of the turn his life had taken.

He didn’t cry, in the end, though he did sit down, taking both the boys up into his lap for an extended hug and snuggle session.

“Look at my gorgeous little men! I’m kinda excited. How about you guys?”

Fen and Jöri both nodded, big-eyed.

“Is it long now, Daddy?” Jöri asked softly. It hit Tony suddenly that all three kids, even sophisticated Hela, had been sitting on this for weeks, anxiously awaiting the moment when they stopped being Uncle Tony on one hand, _Pabbi_ -and-his-kids on the other, two separate entities sharing a space, and became instead 100% family, Daddy and _Pabbi_ and their children, a wonderful, tight little circle never meant to be broken into separate pieces again.

Awaiting the moment they’d become Starks, the word Baldrsons (or Baldrsdottir) forgotten, never to be spoken again.

Tony couldn’t exactly say he blamed them.

It came to Tony that he'd reached the moment of truth, and that his choices were limited. He could dwell on his fear, and on Bruce’s rejection. He could choose to be so hurt by his best friend’s actions that he let it spoil some of his joy in this day. He could chose to be mad at Bruce, and ditto. Or, he could be thankful for Logan, who’d acted beyond decently to him, actually, since before they’d even met—even right after Latveria, when S.H.I.E.L.D. had Loki, and Logan knew Tony only by reputation (and that reputation was, basically, “asshole”), he still gave up his own fucking life on Kurt’s say-so to make sure the kids stayed safe.

He could be thankful for the others, dear friends like Hap and Pep, who’d welcomed Loki from the get-go. All Tony’d needed to say was, “I love this guy,” and they’d been there for him one hundred per cent, from the first day until now.

“Okay, guys,” Tony said, finally able to laugh at himself, at his own capability to tie his entire psyche into Gordian knots. “Final temporary freak-out now concluded. Somebody pull those damn boutonnieres out of the fridge—Team Stark’s moving in! Let’s get some marryin’ done, and enjoy the hell out of the evening!”

“Hear, hear!” Jöri chimed in, in his proper, posh little voice.

Fen fist-pumped so hard he nearly fell off Tony’s knee.

 _I am getting married,_ Tony said to himself, _And I, Tony Stark, am completely, deliriously, wonderfully happy._


	10. Down in the Shakespeare Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Anthony Edward Stark and Mr. Loki Friggason cordially request the pleasure of your company...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to any Jedi among us. I actually have no idea of the process for becoming a Jedi celebrant. I have, however, actually viewed with my very own eyes (in the category of "you can't make these things up")  
>  _Backstroke of the West_. The subtitles are truly a work of pure... something, and that something is awfully, awfully funny. Apparently, the deal was that they resulted from the original English dialogue being translated into Taiwanese Hokkien, then back into English without further reference to the original material. Having been raised Presbyterian, I find myself slightly resentful that all I got at my confirmation was a commemorative _Bible_ instead of a lightsaber. Maybe it was a safety issue. Weird as it may appear, that statement should actually make sense once you read the chapter.
> 
> " _Sweet Thing_ " is by Van Morrison, from his _Astral Weeks_ album, circa 1968.
> 
>  _"My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose_ " is by Robert Burns, the music based on a traditional Scottish tune. Although, for my translation into Icelandic, I had to play with the words somewhat to get them to scan with the music, the original, in Anglicized English, would be:
> 
> _My love is like a red, red rose_  
>  _That’s newly sprung in June;_  
>  _My love is like the melody_  
>  _That’s sweetly played in tune._  
>  _So fair you are, my handsome one,_  
>  _So deep in love am I;_  
>  _And I will love you still, my dear,_  
>  _'Til all the seas go dry._
> 
> The poem Anita recites is the end of _"i carry your heart with me_ " by ee cummings (incidentally, one of my favorite poems).
> 
>  _Adam Bede,_ by "George Eliot" (real name Mary Ann Evans) was first published in 1859. 
> 
> Loki's quote is from the Henry James novel, _Portait of a Lady_ which was first published as a serial in _The Atlantic Monthly_ and _Macmillan's Magazine_ beginning in 1880, then in book form in 1881.

__

* * *

“ _Pabbi!_ ” Hela said, with some small ire, for perhaps the tenth time since she’d begun her chore. “Are you a child? Can’t you not sit still for me even a moment?”

“Forgive me, _hjarta minn_ , that I exasperate you. My excitement is great, and holding still is truly difficult. No one could be more patient with me than you have been or, indeed, complete the task more beautifully. How many plaits remain to be completed, please, dearest?”

Hela relented slightly. “Only two, I think, _Pabbi._ ”

For a moment she paused in her work, wrapping her arms round Loki’s shoulders, leaning her cheek against the top of his head. Loki’s hands curled round her slender arms gently, and for a moment they two were only still and quiet, close in body and mind as any might ever be in life, mortal or immortal.

 _Oh, my dearest heart, my radiant one_ , Loki sent to her, regarding their faces together in the glass. Dark and dark, fair and fair.

His beautiful Hela wore her own midnight hair plaited into a spiral at the back of her head, its sheen made even more lustrous by contrast with her full-skirted gown, the perfect green-blue of a summer sky reflected from deep ice. Anita was attired in a handsome skirted suit of the same colour, and Pepper’s gown, of Hela’s own design, shared the color as well, all matching the small crystals, strung intermittently on thin black silk, that Hela had engaged herself in braiding into his hair, along with a scattering of slightly larger crystals, which were highly faceted, yet clear.

It was meant to imitate the ice of Jötunnheimr, flashing light, and also to be his “something blue,” as Midgardian custom decreed.

His “something old” was a talisman Thor had been given by a king of the Northmen long centuries before, marked with runes of fortune, fertility and protection. When they concluded the earlier anointing, his brother had fastened its leathern cord round Loki’s neck, kissing his brow as he fastened the clasp.

”Because my joy is boundless,” Thor said, “And I would have you ever safe and happy, dearest Loki.”

For “something new” Loki wore his beautiful Darius King tuxedo, so superbly tailored by Mr. Pierre.

He had borrowed a silk Armani bow tie from Tony’s own wardrobe.

It was a most lovely tie, as such things went. Perhaps one day Tony might receive it back from him again.

Or perhaps not.

Loki’s gave a grin of pure mischief.

The jury (as they said here in his new home), was still out on that one.

He often pilfered small items of Tony’s and carried them about with him, bringing with him a morsel of his beloved’s soul in the person of things he used and touched.

“There now,” Hela said, “All done. Was that so terrible?”

Loki shook his head gently. Most of his hair had been left loose, and the tiny crystals twinkled subtly in the midst of that curling abundance. He looked undoubtedly princely, but wild and exotic as well, perhaps even dangerous, with his edgy, perfect suit, his vivid eyes, his unbound hair.

 _Tony will greatly enjoy the effect_ , he thought. Tony always claimed to find him comely, and Loki’s eyes told him, just now, that might actually be the case.

What if he only deceived himself, however? What if what he perceived as finery, others might mark as ridiculous, foolish, foppish? What if he should bring Tony shame?”

“Oh, _Pabbi_ ,” Hela said, with a sigh, hugging him again from behind.

An instant later, Kurt slipped into the room. “Hela, would you like to finish getting ready now? Your _Pabbi_ wouldn’t want you to run out of time.”

To Loki, Hela already appeared as prepared as prepared could be, but his daughter, having exchanged a glance of significance with his dearest friend, immediately replied, “Yes, of course, Uncle Kurt. Auntie Pepper said I might wear just a little mascara and lip gloss, and that she would help me. Jöri and I should also begin to warm up our voices.” She’d tripped out the door before Loki even realized she was leaving.

“Look at you,” Kurt said , with his smile of great charm. “So luscious, you’ll make Tony forget all his vows.”

A warmth rose in Loki’s cheeks, forcing him to glance away from his friend.

“Lo,” Kurt said softly.

“You look wonderfully handsome, Kurt,” Loki said, “As did Tony and his henchmen.”

“Groomsmen,” Kurt corrected, absent-mindedly.

“What did I say?” Loki asked. His mind felt shattered, like a fragile piece of crockery, dropped—even though he knew much of that came from Tony and his nervous distress, and not from his own mind.

He wished, in this very instant, he could wrap Tony up tenderly in his arms, Midgardian customs be damned, and tell him that, to one who saw his heart, he was a good man in truth, the spirit of blind, foolish Howard did not fill him, and that all would be well between they two.

“We’re getting down to the wire,” Kurt said. “There’s barely half an hour before it’s time to leave, Lo, so you’d better grab a little rest while you can. Now's a good time to get yourself all calm and nicely centered, I'd think.”

“I am calm," Loki protested, "And I might muss my shirt.” He felt lightly fatigued, it was true, but in his excitement the thought of lying still did not necessarily appeal to him.

“You won’t muss your shirt,” Kurt said, laughing and helped Loki off with his jacket, draping the garment tidily over the back of a chair.

Loki stretched out, luxuriating in the comfort of the mattress, which was that Midgardian thing known as “pillow-top.”

He had actually experienced a surprisingly relaxing day, with first a complex ceremony called a "Gentleman's Facial," which involved a comely young woman of the Eastlands applying steaming towels and divers unguents to his face, whilst a second woman trimmed, then rubbed briskly upon his nails with a scrap of that soft leather called "suede" mounted upon an implement much like a weaving shuttle.

The ceremony of facial felt almost deliriously pleasurable, nearly enough to distract from what was being done to his hands, which his fingers were still far too sensitive to comfortably bear.

Bear it he did, however.

He wished to be as beautiful for Tony as he possibly might, and the end result, he had to admit, was of great loveliness. His nails winked and caught the light as if surfaced with diamonds, catching his attention again and again.

The vast bed, with its tawny draperies, dipped a little as Kurt sat beside him, and took Loki’s hand in both of his own. The blue-velvet warmth of Kurt’s touch seeped in through his skin, driving the last of the ache from his joints.

“You should have said the manicure was hurting you, Lo,” Kurt told him gently. “Believe it or not, it isn’t a Midgardian requirement for marriage. It was only meant to be relaxing and help pass the time.”

“But now my hands are of surpassing loveliness for Tony, and the ceremony of facial was extremely relaxing. Thor also enjoyed his very much, and agreed with me that we should repeat such a ceremony often. It grieves me, though, that you could not enjoy it.”

Kurt laughed softly. “I suppose I might have. It only would have felt different. Very different, I’d imagine.” He gave a light shudder. Kurt hated nearly above all sensations for his soft, clean fur to be made sticky.

“It would have felt damp,” Loki answered. “And the unguents in your fur would have felt most unpleasant, loveliest Kurt. However, I appreciate greatly your use of the time to prepare my younglings. Never have I seen them more pleasing in appearance, and you know well I believe my children the comeliest beings in all the Nine Realms.”

“They are all very beautiful children,” Kurt agreed.

With a sigh, he lay beside Loki atop the coverlet, Loki’s hand yet curled within his own. “Will… I almost hate to ask, Lo, but do you think Tony will take the apple? It’s quite a wedding gift.”

“I believe he will take it, yes,” Loki said. “I do not believe, however, that he will taste of it at once. If nothing else, curiosity will fill his soul, and he will wish to subject the fruit to intensive analysis, perhaps in tandem with Bruce, his brother of science, though I predict the apple's essential nature will continue to confound them.”

Kurt gave another quiet laugh. “That will certainly made him cross.”

“It is a thing to be understood, yet not known.” Loki shrugged. “Then, too, will Tony wish to think on its meanings and, truly, this is a thing he ought certainly to do. As a gift, it is as a sword is, a tool with two edges equally sharp, of great use, yet not to be used lightly.”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” Kurt told him. “In case Tony’s answer is ‘no’ in the end.”

“If the answer is no, then the time we have as one will be no less sweet, only briefer in its lingering.” Loki’s eyes began to sting, and he shut them rapidly, so that Kurt would not glimpse his foolish tears.”

“Oh, Lo.” Kurt sighed again. “Please, please, _mein lieber Freund_ , forget I ever mentioned such a thing. You aren’t meant to be sad on this beautiful day.”

“I am not sad, dearest Kurt,” Loki answered, which was partly an untruth, and partly not. “My emotion only runs this day at the highest of pitches. I pray you would put my foolish, _ergi_ tears from your memory.”

“Someday,” Kurt told him kindly, “I will teach you to stop saying ‘ _ergi_ ’ as if it’s something disgusting.”

“I think that you will,” Loki answered, “When what I see of that same quality in you, belovéd friend, I find entirely delightful.” He lay quiet for a time, thinking of many things.

“Kurt,” he said at last. “The _Nornir_ …”

“ _Ja_?”

“They did not find me wanting.”

Kurt squeezed his hand a little tighter, waiting patiently for Loki to speak again.

“I believed that they would. I believed I would be found unworthy. I truly did. The tears bit at the back of my throat, so certain was I of their answer. And yet…”

“Oh, my beautiful friend.” Kurt pressed a soft kiss to Loki’s brow. “The things that happened to me when I was young were not my fault, and you’re able to accept that completely. The terrible things that happened to you were not your fault, either. Evil men used you and lied to you, _liebchen_. You yourself were blameless. It tears at my heart that you can’t belie ve that, Lo. Lie there a little and send out your awareness. I already know what you’ll feel—only how much we all love you.”

“I try,” Loki answered quietly.

“I know you do.” The tip of Kurt’s lovely tail stroked down Loki’s cheek. “Only rest now, _lieber Freund_. Rest, and feel how we care for you.”

Loki lay still and let his mind brush lightly over the many minds he knew in this great, grand inn. Kurt was right—there was much love here, much acceptance, much joyful anticipation. Every mind he touched wished him well. Above that, the _Nornir_ had accepted his plea, and he might marry freely and in good conscience. When all was said, he found it pleasant to tarry here a little, when he had felt already much excitement this day, with much excitement yet ahead, and his strength not at its best.

Besides which, it remained an extremely comfortable bed.

Loki drifted into a small dream of sharing it with Tony later in the evening, lying within the circle of Tony’s arms, perfect as the moon is perfect when she shines round.

The ritual with Thor (entrails? Honestly, Tony—as if he would consent to something so… insanitary!) had left him feeling full of secrets and mysteries, yet also as if he had arrived at a place of completeness in himself.

Too long had he been Loki the Wanderer, Loki-Who-Has-No-Home, Loki the Nameless, Son of No One. Now he would be Loki of House Stark, espoused of Anthony, and no one, man or god, might question his name. His home to defend, for so long as he drew breath and the structure stood, was Stark (or Avengers) tower, there would he make his line and raise many children, and…

Loki faltered a little, thoughts of lost small Wilhelm never far from him, but he found, to his great surprise, those memories had gained sweetness, transfigured from searing pain into gentle sorrow.

When Anita came to tell him the time had arrived, Loki found himself altogether at peace.

* * *

They absolutely couldn’t have picked a better time of year, Tony thought. He’d been pretty damn proud of himself that he’d thought of the Shakespeare Garden in the first place, as a site for their actual ceremony, but he’d never seen it like this—all new green leaves and flowering trees, riots of brilliant-colored tulips everywhere he looked, along with a hundred other flowers, some he could identify, most he couldn’t, which didn’t make them any less amazing.

Loki, who adored flowers of all kinds, would be over the moon.

Every flower, plant, shrub and tree mentioned in Shakespeare was supposed to be planted here. Tony didn’t know if they’d missed any (though Loki surely would), he only knew Mother Nature appeared to be pulling out all the stops on this one. Unlike his intended, he wasn’t really a gardeny kind of guy, but even he had to admit the place was gorgeous. It kind of looked as if all the dreary rain they’d suffered through in April had turned out to be totally worthwhile after all.

Tony grinned suddenly to himself, thinking of one of Jöri second-grader jokes.

“If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?” Jör sprang on him one evening when they were sharing kitchen duty, loading up the dishwasher. “Give up?”

Tony feigned perplexity, finally answering, “Dunno, Jör. If April showers bring May flowers, what _do_ May flowers bring?”

“Pilgrims!” the little boy crowed, and laughed uproariously, so cute in his delight at his own cleverness Tony had to laugh too.

He laughed again, leaning back into the upholstery of the carriage seat.

Using horse-drawn carriages to travel through the park had seemed beyond hokey to Tony at first, but Loki had been so clearly delighted with the thought he caved almost immediately. Horses, apparently, were a thing in Asgard, and Loki and Thor both loved them, as well as being expert riders.

Loki, of course, (nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see) had needed to "talk" to each horse in turn, to find the happiest ones, with the kindest drivers, lest their wedding be jinxed, or cursed, or some such thing, by being driven by crappy human beings.

Keeping in mind, of course, that this was the guy who also carried on long conversations with Director's giant dog. Tony was marrying Dr. Fucking Doolittle.

Weirdly, having been in business long enough to be able to tell a tell, Tony found himself able to predict Loki’s choices beforehand by watching the drivers themselves—the one Loki picked had thought his intended was sweet, certainly nothing worse than a little eccentric, instead of bat-shit insane.

Tony reminded himself that when Loki was strong enough,  he should totally work out a way to enable the Brothers Friggason to go riding whenever they wanted.

He should maybe get Loki a puppy of some kind also, at some point, as a kind of therapy dog, a companion for when he felt too blue (sometimes literally) to deal well with so-called humanity.

Not a Great Dane, though, much as Loki adored Director’s queen-sized animal pal. Tony knew very well what that would lead to: the damn thing would end up sleeping in their bed, with Loki that was inevitable, and he drew the line at sharing with a canine bigger than he was.

The smallest thought of the guy he loved so much and, suddenly, just like that, every last bit of his nervousness dropped away, an almost delirious happiness taking its place, rising inside him like a ginormous fleet of Nanobyte-sized helium balloons.

“Hey, someone just got bit by the happy bug,” Logan said. He was grinning hugely, narrow eyes glinting, looking like he was about to commit some act of unspeakable carnage—which actually meant he was in a really great mood.

Happy looked just like his name.

“Oh, look!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Hey, Pep!”

Tony gave his CEO, former lover, and best-friend-who-wasn’t-Bruce a hand up into the carriage. He'd never seen her look lovelier, in her floaty blue-green dress with the fancy gold embroidery around the neckline and waist, her beautiful strawberry-blonde hair braided into a coil at the back of her head.

“Nice of you to join us, Potts.”

Pepper laughed. “You try walking on these paths in high heels, Stark, and we'll see how you do."

She brushed at a nonexistent strand of stray hair. "Oh, my god, I’m a mess! Tony, I’m so nervous, I stuck a mascara brush right in poor Hela’s eye. Total disaster! She took it like a trouper, but ma… keup remover had to be used to save her dress. At least she’s safely in the hands of Team Loki now.”

“Is that what the code word is for magic these days?” Anita laughed. “Yes, I know. Jorge and I both know. I am Loki’s agent. We spend a fair amount of time together. And my husband’s also a very observant man.”

“Silly me,” Tony said. “Does Loki know you know? He hasn’t said anything.”

“You _are_ silly, Loki knows everything about everything. It most likely didn’t occur to him to mention the fact. Or else he didn’t want you thinking he wasn’t circumspect . He’s really been very good. It’s just that Jorge and I are pretty good too.”

“You are good,” Tony said, meaning something slightly different. “You’re exactly what my baby needs.”

Anita blushed a little, without losing her sweet smile. She was the biggest woman, height-wise, Tony had seen in his life, with broad shoulders and a powerful pair of guns. If Thor ever lost his worthiness again, Anita Garcia could probably pick up Mjolnir and carry on the fight as She-Thor, and nobody would blink an eye. She literally could have passed as the thunder-god’s twin sister--big, blonde and beautiful, though unlike his soon to be bro-in-law, Anita added another “B.” She was a searingly brilliant woman, and her last “B” may also have been that, despite being an extremely kind lady, she took absolutely no bullshit from anyone.

“Anita,” Tony said, “I meant to thank you for getting—what’s the word? consecrated?—to do this for us. I really appreciate the extra effort on your part, and there’s no one Lok respects more. It was just, just a really great thing.”

“Confirmed, and you’re very welcome, Tony.” Anita’s smile was warm, kind… and maybe a little wicked.

Pepper giggled. So did Logan. After a second, Happy joined in.

“What?” Tony looked from one to another of what Loki persisted in referring to as his “henchmen.”

“Bub, you’re having a Jedi wedding,” Logan told him. “A gay Jedi wedding. May the Force be flamin’ with you.”

“It’s a thing,” Pepper assured him. “A legitimate thing, with growing numbers.”

“And they made it really easy for me,” Anita explained. “I’m a busy woman, and they hardly made me jump through any hoops. I just went into a room with two of their... um... officials. They stared at me in silence for about ten minutes, then said, 'The Light Side of the Force is strong with you, Anita,' which I took as a great compliment. Then we did the paperwork. Over and done. Besides, Logan, you awful man, it’s not a Jedi wedding, as such, it’s a regular wedding with a Jedi celebrant. Don’t you like that word, celebrant? I love it. A wedding should be celebrated. It should have nothing in it but joy.”

“Anita, I agree with you completely.” Pepper reached over to squeeze Tony’s hand. “I’m so glad we’re here, my old, dear friend. I’m so happy.”

“I’m happy too,” Hap said, then laughed with everyone else, because, well, yes, yes, he was.

“Once when I was in Taiwan,” Tony said, “I saw _Return of the Jedi_ in Taiwanese Hokkien, only subtitled in English. At least it looked like _Return of the Jedi_. The subtitles called it _Backstroke of the West: Rise of the Presbyterian Church_.”

They laughed at that, too, as the carriage made a slight jolt into motion, the big horse’s hooves clopping gently on the brick-lined paths, the whole world alive with birdsong and color and soft spring air.

Alive and perfect and right. Completely right.

Tony knew he’d remember every last second of this day for the rest of his life.

* * *

Tony and Anita stood at a very small crossroads, at the top of a slight rise, and just out of sight of the crowd, though if Tony peeked, he could see the narrow top of the short staircase below, its rustic wooden railings wound with white flowers. In a minute, he and Anita would walk down that staircase together. Everybody would be seated by that time, except for Pepper and the Groomsmen (which kind of sounded like the name of a very bad wedding band), arrayed on either side at the bottom of the steps, where the staircase got much wider.

He imagined everyone’s expectant faces, waiting for his arrival, the smiles of anticipation.

And, yes, everything remained perfectly perfect, and right.

“Are you ready, Tony?” Anita asked.

He grinned at her, probably looking deranged—like he even cared. It was his fucking wedding day!

Tony couldn't quite help but shake a little, but that was all right too.

“Never been more ready for anything in my life,” he told her.

“Let’s start then,” Anita said.

There must have been some sort of super-secret wedding planner Bat Signal in play, because the second they began to move, the music started, just a solo acoustic guitar, but beautifully played, lilting notes from back when Tony was just a little guy, music that naturally hadn’t been his music then (though he could hazily remember his mom listening to the song), but now seemed exactly right for the moment.

A deep, rich masculine voice rose toward them, carried on the May breeze:

 _...And I'll be satisfied_  
_Not to read in between the lines_  
_And I will walk and talk_  
_In gardens all wet with rain_  
_And I will never, ever, ever, ever_  
_Grow so old again._

_Oh sweet thing, sweet thing…_

Tony found himself smiling, wanting to smile just as broadly as before, but forcing himself to take it down a notch, because it probably wouldn't do to resemble a crazed ax-murderer as he approached the figurative altar.

“Everyone understands,” Anita said softly, just before they started down the stairs, linking her arm with his. Just at that moment, he might actually have needed the support.

Down at the bottom of the stairs stretched a sea of pink and brown faces, a total blur as far as Tony was concerned, though he could tell everyone had stood up.

He moved blindly to his appointed place, Logan’s broad, powerful hand resting warmly on his back for a moment, helping Tony to steady himself again.

“Everything’s beautiful, just beautiful, Tony,” Pepper whispered, as Van Morrison gave way to something different, something Tony didn’t know, a little slower, filled with a sweet, poignant longing.

Hela appeared first, in her pretty blue-green dress, holding a small bouquet of what Loki had said were called calla lilies, the stems wrapped with ribbon that matched her gown. They looked like the narrow bells of some kind of trumpet, only velvety and pure white.

Loki came directly behind her, with the boys in their white suits to either side. The moment they passed beneath the arch of white flowers, just heading in between the two sides of the crowd, Jöri and Hela began to sing in _Ӕs_ , their sweet, choir-trained voices soaring in harmony into the sky:

 _Ó rós af rauðum_  
_er sönn ást mín,_  
_sem sprettur ný í júní_  
_Ó, ástin mín er eins og lag_  
_sem gerir sætt lag þú,_  
_gleði mín og annað hjartat._  
_Svo djúpt þú ert elskaður_  
_Og ég mun elska þig, kærust,_  
_þar til höf fara þurr..._

It was a well-known fact that Tony didn’t really go in for certain types of music, but his children’s voices struck him as so perfect, and so full of love, even if he couldn’t understand the words, that he felt his heart break a little, in the best of all possible ways, like an old fracture that has to be re-broken to be set right again.

All of a sudden, he may not have been able to see anything else, but he could see his family, his wonderful, magical, beautiful family, and he loved them with the fierceness of a million dragons and volcanoes and stars going spectacularly nova.

When they reached the stairs, the children moved just off to the side, sitting on little blue-green cushions laid ready for them on the steps. At last, then, Loki came to him, taking both of Tony’s hands in his own, gazing down at him with those huge vibrantly-green eyes of his, eyes that held the entire universe.

He was gorgeous. Of course he was gorgeous, he was Loki, after all, with his elegant hands and those eyes, and the way that—oh my gods!—suit followed every amazing, long, lean line of his body.

The breeze lifted strands of his fabulous midnight hair, worn loose around his shoulders and full of tiny, glittering points, as if diamonds and bits of ice had somehow been woven into all those jet-black waves.

His Loki. His beautiful Loki. Beautiful in every way.

Their minds touched and Tony was lost, only Loki’s eyes and Anita’s voice remained.

“On this glorious day, on this most glorious of occasions," Anita began, "Tony has asked me to begin with these words, dedicated to the wonderful man he loves.

She paused a moment, and then her sweet voice rose:

 _...here is the deepest secret nobody knows_  
_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_  
_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_  
_higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_  
_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars_  
_i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)_

”Tony and Loki have come here today to pledge to one another, from this day onward, that not only will they carry one another’s hearts within their hearts, they will care for them, respect them and cherish them.”

“Yes,” Loki mouthed, smiling at him, his expression so sweet, tender, caring, that if Tony hadn’t already loved him with everything he had to dedicate toward loving another person, he would have fallen in love with him that instant, on the spot, even if Loki had been a complete stranger.

"Dear friends,” Anita resumed, her sweet alto voice somehow the perfect accompaniment to the bright sounds of the birds and the bees droning warmly in the oceans of brilliant-colored tulips all around them, “I welcome you to this beautiful park, and this beautiful garden. Tony and Loki are overjoyed that you could join them today to witness their marriage, the exchanging of their vows, the pledging of their love for one another.”

It hit Tony what a cute grin Anita had, with dimples, that made her blue eyes sparkle. She looked as if there was nothing more she wanted to do in the entire world than be here with them as their celebrant.

“In her great novel _Adam Bede_ ,” she continued, “George Eliot wrote, ’ _What greater thing is there for two souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?_ ’ Tony, Loki, this is the journey you set out upon today, a journey made up of all life has to offer, faced together, met together, overcome together. Are you prepared to make your vows to one another here, before everyone assembled: family, friends and colleagues?”

Loki’s eyes met Tony’s, filled with the gorgeous green fire that was his pure, undiluted essence.

“I am,” he said.

Tony squeezed his hand. “I am.”

“Tony will begin,” Anita said.

For the space of about five seconds Tony’s mind became a wiped whiteboard. His mouth became the Sahara Desert.

Why in hell hadn’t he thought to put in an earpiece so that J.A.R.V.I.S. could cue him?

 _Uh… because cheating?_ he reminded himself. _Because... from the heart?_

He could get through this on his own. He _would_ get through this.

And just like that, he could speak again.

“Loki, in the words of no lesser genius than A. A. Milne, author of _Winnie the Pooh_..." he began.

A ripple of laughter went through the guests.

“ _'I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen'_.” The thing was, I had no idea what kind of adventure it was going to be, that you would be the first person, in possibly ever, to actually see me as a real hero, not just that big-mouth guy who’s good with machines and flies around in a shiny suit. You saw through to everything in my nature that I kept hidden for so long, every weakness, every fault, but it didn’t stop you for a second from taking the chance of loving me—now that’s a brave man for you, folks!

"Loki, the thing is, when you see me as good, it makes me want to _be_ good, when you see me as strong and wise, I actually believe I can become those things. You are the best, strongest, kindest, most forgiving person I have ever met. You make me want to race into the future with my eyes wide open, holding tight to your hand and knowing everything will be all right. You are my friend, my lover, the _Pabbi_ of our sweet children and my most heroic of heroes. I want every day to prove my love to you.

"For those reasons, and so many others I, Anthony Edward, ask you, Loki Friggason, to be my wedded husband. I promise to consider your needs equally to my own; to be a source of strength for you always, even as I celebrate your own strength; to freely share my thoughts and feelings and to listen when you share yours with me. I make these solemn promises, to keep in times of plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; from this day forward."

“Anthony,” Loki said, still with the fire in his eyes, and something close to fierceness in his expression, even as he held Tony’s hands a little tighter. “My Anthony, _hjarta hjarta minn_ , the heart of my heart. As Anita often says, I am a 'book person', and as you seem to love it in me, so will I hazard another quote, for the words are wise, though the book itself was passing tedious. ‘ _It has made me better loving you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them._ '

"Tony, loving you, I have learned I may put away anger. I may put away strife. What I think, say, create, not only finds acceptance in your eyes, but is found worthy. You have given me love and teach me daily a thing I have never believed, that I am deserving of love. You have not turned from me, even in the direst of circumstances, but supported me steadfastly, and every last thing you have done for me, so would I do for you in kind, with utter fidelity. In this greatest of journeys, our joy lies in that we have taken the path we chose as one, together ever.

"Anthony, by my will, my honor, my life, I enter into this marriage with you, swearing unto you all these things. I make this commitment from this day forward.”

“Fenrir, sweetheart, will you bring us the rings now, please?” Anita asked.

Fen jumped to his feet and rushed over, wrapping his strong little arms hard around Tony’s leg. Tony stroked his hand over the little boy’s thick, soft hair, feeling Fen’s face press into his thigh in shyness and delight.

“Right pocket first, buddy,” Tony whispered.

Fen pulled away from him, staring at his own small hands with great concentration. He got the correct pocket right off, pulling out the first of the identical bands of black titanium, their edges bordered in rose gold.

They were beautiful rings, Tony thought, classy and understated. Loki had picked them of course. He’d also had them marked on the inside with runes that meant safety, fidelity and love everlasting.

“Anthony,” Anita said, smiling, “Is it your will to take Loki as your husband, to live together with him in a marriage that ever grows in love and truth? Will you vow with him to be partners in life in such a way that together you will meet every situation of life; the peaceful and the chaotic, the routine and the exciting, the sorrowful and the joyful, the threatening and the inviting. Will you love him, honor him, and commit yourself to him in marriage as long as you both shall live? If it is your will, place the ring on Loki’s left ring finger and swear."

For just a second, Tony had more trouble telling left from right than Fen had. Loki gave him a quick, flashing grin, wiggling slightly the finger in question.

Tony slipped on the ring. It looked beautiful and right on Loki’s long, slender hand.

“Loki, by my will, my honor, my life, I enter into this marriage with you, swearing to you these things. I make this commitment until death parts us.”

“Loki,” Anita went on, “Is it your will to take Anthony as your husband, to live together with him in a marriage that ever grows in love and truth? Will you vow with him to be partners in life in such a way that together you will meet every situation of life; the peaceful and the chaotic, the routine and the exciting, the sorrowful and the joyful, the threatening and the inviting. Will you love him, honor him, and commit yourself to him in marriage as long as you both shall live? If it is your will, place the ring on Tony’s left ring finger and swear.”

Loki held Fen’s hand, lovingly, just for a moment, as his son handed him Tony's ring. Whatever he said inside Fen’s head made the boy beam.

So gently Tony could hardly feel it, Loki slipped the ring onto his finger.

“Tony, by my will, my honor, my life, I enter into this marriage with you, swearing to you all these things. I make this commitment until death parts us.”

“Then, by the power vested in me by the State of New York…”

“And the Jedi Council,” Anita's husband whispered behind her.

“I now pronounce you married, loving husbands to one another. May truth, gentleness, consideration, mutual support and joy be always part of your union. Gentlemen, you may kiss."

Loki cupped Tony’s face between his hands, looking a long time into his eyes.

“Always,” he said at last, softly. “Always, Tony.”

Loki bent down a little, and they kissed, Loki’s lips soft against his, the mechanics of kissing in front of so many people totally forgotten in the flood-tide of love and tenderness that flowed to him from his new husband.

They clung to one another, never wanting to be apart, and pretty soon all three kids had hurried over to cling to them too.

 _My family_ , Tony thought. _My family._

It was like finding proof, all in one instant, of the existence of unicorns and angels, and of learning the exact origins of the universe, right down to the smallest detail. Tony held Loki tighter, realizing that he’d started to cry against Loki’s superlatively tailored chest.

Loki rubbed his back with a gentle touch, crooning, “My love, my Tony, _hjarta hjarta minn_.”

“Friends, I present to you the Stark Family,” Anita said, somewhere far in the distance--maybe even a galaxy far away--so far away it didn’t even seem to matter. “Tony, Loki, and their children.”

“Always,” Loki said a final time, with a firmness that could not be denied.


	11. An Apple a Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Loki spend some time alone together in the park before moving on to their reception, where a good time is had by all. Afterwards, in the Royal Suite, Loki makes a discovery that causes him to give Tony his wedding gift sooner than intended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki's song is, of course, " _Let it Go_ " from the 2013 Disney film _Frozen_. 
> 
> The translation from Maurice Sendak's _Where the Wild Things Are_ into Icelandic is my own (and so are the no-doubt numerous mistakes).
> 
> I can't recall any connection in actual folkloric sources between Ithunn's (Idunn's) apples and Avalon, but considering the island's other names, the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
> 
> "An apple a day keeps the doctor" away is a common proverb that originated in Wales, the first recorded wording (circa the 1860's) being, "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread." The phrase appeared with its current wording around the turn of the 19th century, with examples found in print by 1899.
> 
> The WTF? practice of "The Elf on the Shelf" began as a 2005 picture book " _The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition_ " released on the world by writers Carol Aebersold (and her daughter Chanda Bell), with illustrations Coë Steinwart. Supposedly, the elf in question has been sent from the North Pole to watch over children and, at night, to relate to Santa who's been naughty or nice. Many children find this charming; the rest are terrified.

* * *

The carriage followed behind them for a little while, but as he and Loki began to move toward narrower paths, Tony waved it on its way.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” he asked his new husband. “You’re not feeling droopy or anything, right?”

“An odd question for our wedding evening, husband,” Loki answered, with a soft laugh. There was something about him, something in the way he looked, beyond his ordinary, everyday gorgeousness, even. A stillness, maybe? A beautiful stillness? Could that even be a thing?

Tony laughed too. “You know what I mean. I was being thoughtful. Solicitous, even. A word I learned from you, by the way.”

“No doubt.” Loki looked down into Tony’s eyes, his own eyes moss-green in the near-darkness, yet still somehow catching the low light. Christ, that color! So otherworldly. Nearly hypnotic. A color to get entirely lost in.

Loki studied Tony’s face next, intently, finally tracing Tony’s lower lip with his thumb before leaning in for a soft kiss. “I know happiness,” he said, a silent moment after breaking away, “And contentment such as I have never known. Would I sound overmuch like a foolish young maid, were I to say I keep expecting to awaken from the sweetness of this dream?”

Contentment, Tony realized. That’s what he’d noticed, but contentment beyond anything he’d ever seen, the tension of the gods knew how many years, decades—even centuries—suddenly released.

“You really are happy, aren’t you, babe?” Tony asked, cupping his new husband’s cheek in his palm. Loki rested into the touch, his eyes drifting shut. “Would I sound like a foolish young maid if I said the same thing back to you?”

Loki draped his arm around Tony’s shoulder, as Tony slipped his own arm around his husband’s slender waist.

“No,” he said, “For you are incapable of sounding so.”

“Glad to hear it. I was worried there for a minute.” He pulled Loki closer, as close as he could without the awkwardness of the difference in their heights becoming an issue. They ambled on through the growing dark, along the looping paths, content just to be together in the quiet of their contentment, Loki’s consciousness a happy hum at the edge of Tony’s awareness.

“And then Monday morning, remember, it’s our court date,” he said. “The papers get signed and the whole shebang is officially official. You. Me. The kids. One hundred per cent family. Signed, sealed and delivered.

“’Whole shebang,’” Loki pondered. “That is to say… the totality?”

Tony grinned. “You got it, Lok. The totality.”

His husband pondered a little longer. “You will laugh, but…”

“What?” Tony asked. “I won’t laugh.” Though he was actually afraid he might, especially if it was one of those goofy, amazing things that seemed to pop out of Loki’s mouth now and then.

“Except, okay, it’s possible I’ll laugh, but it won’t be at you, my baby. I’m just in such a damn ecstatic--there's another Loki word--mood. Know what I mean? I didn’t forget my vows or drop your ring down a storm drain, or anything, and I just married the sweetest, handsomest guy on Midgard. I feel like a fucking Disney princess. In about two seconds I’m gonna burst into song, accompanied by a chorus of birds and squirrels."

" _My power flurries through the air into the ground_ ," Loki sang. A careless wave of his hand and the entire corridor of trees ahead of the them glittered suddenly with minute crystals of ice.

 _My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around_  
_And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast_  
_I'm never going back,_  
_The past is in the past!_

Tony laughed with delight. "Oh, my beautiful god of ice and fire, do you know how crazy I am about you? You're so right--the past is in the past, and we never do need to go back to that mess. I'm so happy now, in this moment with you, I might even be slightly inclined to bubble over with joy.”

“Bubble over…” Loki's grin was pleased—no, delighted—maybe a little shy. They walked on, past the glittering trees, Loki continuing his silent, happy pondering, the lights of Loeb’s Boathouse, site of their reception, starting to wink between the branches, so warm and inviting it really was like something from a story, like when the heroes come home, all their battles won.

“ _’Fram á nótt mjög fridi, þar sem hann fann kvöldmáltíðina hans að bíða eftir honum, og það var enn heitt_ ,’” Loki said quietly, almost to himself, and of course Tony didn’t have a clue, though there was something in the cadence of his husband’s words that reminded him of other words, familiar, and loved, words he remembered in his mom’s voice, out of a still, comfortable time when he was very young.

“What’s that, babe?”

Loki took his hand and kissed Tony’s palm, his smile, just then, the most beautiful, and delightful thing he’d seen in all his life. “Ah, Tony, you remember. You only do not remember your memory.”

In that moment, he heard his mother, Maria’s, voice inside his head, sweet and loving, and with its own contentment. “… _into the night of his very own room, where he found his supper waiting for him, and it was still hot_.” Tony had been snug and warm, in his own “very own room,” in his very own bed, smelling his mom’s vanilla-flower perfume, her soft, small hand wrapped around his even smaller hand. Usually he’d liked books about real things, but that didn’t stop _Where the Wild Things Are_ from being his favorite. He was a boy who could well understand making mischief of one kind or another, who could understand sailing off for a year, and in and out of weeks, to be king of the Wild Things.

There in the present, Loki’s hand in his, Tony smelled vanilla, and felt the soft, warm press of a kiss against his cheek, and for just a moment felt that Maria had been with them on that perfect day, his real mom who’d loved him and cared for him, before Howard broke whatever had been strong in her.

He stood on the lake shore, the lights of their party warm and bright just across the water, as Loki, his real-life magical prince, held him tight in his strong, slender arms, kissing him, consoling him in a tongue Tony's ears didn’t understand, but he knew in his heart.

“They’ll be wondering…” Tony said at last.

“Worry not,” Loki answered, with that same, perfect contentment. “All are aware, in this great moment, we require our time.”

After a minute, though, Tony’s stomach totally shattered the mood by growling thunderously.

Loki laughed. “It seems you appreciate the moment, best-belovéd, yet your appetite does not. Have you eaten today, my husband?”

“Not… exactly. But, god, I like the way that sounds. Try to call me ‘husband’ a lot over the next few weeks, okay? I’ve gotta say I’m kind of loving it. ‘Tony, husband of Loki. Tony Stark, Loki’s husband.’ See what I mean?”

“Mellifluous indeed,” Loki answered. “Loki Stark, husband of his belovéd Tony, quite a sweet sound. I would drink wine and dance in your arms, my dearest husband. Would you wish to do the same with me?”

Tony kissed his palm in return. “You know, Lok, I think that maybe I would.”

The path where they stood led them down to the brink of the lake itself, where a red-and-white rowboat waited, obviously for them, from its decorations of white flowers and ribbons.

Something occurred to Tony, and he laughed again—very much at himself. “I sure hope you can row, Lok, because I haven’t a clue. More of a motorboat kind of guy, y’know.”

“More of a costly yacht ‘kind of guy’, you mean to say.” Loki grinned at him. “Fortunate indeed for you, beloved, that I am indeed a SpaceViking and row excellently well, as I learned in my youth. Bend your knees, as you step over the gunwale. And keep your center of gravity low—in your hips—entering the boat, then you are less likely to upset it, or yourself.”

“Nope, wouldn’t want to upset the boat,” Tony muttered. "Poor, sensitive boat."

Loki’s strong hand steadied him as he stumbled into the wide seat at the back, neatly managing to pitch himself over the other side despite Loki’s grip. His husband at least had the decency not to mock him.

Loki, of course, entered as gracefully as it is possible to enter a small, unsteady boat, taking the middle seat and fitting the oars. “Cast off would you, dearest? Untie the rope, that is.”

“I do know the meaning of ‘cast off’, Lok.”

“Glad I am to hear it.” Loki’s grin was pure mischief. “For I had not known how deep your ignorance ran.”

“My ignorance of boats, you mean.” Tony loved when Loki teased him; he loved even more when Loki felt well enough to be teased back. “Since, as you like to tell me, I’m otherwise wise in all things.”

“'Otherwise wise?’” Loki quirked up a quizzical eyebrow.

Tony was too caught up in watching him row to answer, the way Loki made it look powerful and effortless at the same time, the way his abundant hair would veil his face for seconds as he bent forward into his stroke, the way the bright, rising moon illuminated his face and sparkled off the jewels braided into all that darkness.

They approached the long, low expanse of the boathouse quickly, and it seemed more welcoming with every yard they traveled across the lake, with its many warmly lighted windows and the happy music drifting from inside, out into the night air.

“It’s them! Oh, it’s them!” he heard a sweet young voice—it could only be Jöri’s--call.

The doors opened, their friends pouring out onto the porch that ran the length of the building, and with them came an eruption of bubbles.

“Don’t people throw rice anymore?” Steve asked, in his Grandpa Rogers, “What is it with you young whippersnappers these days?” voice.

“Turns out its bad for the birds, Cap,” Clint answered. “They kind of explode, or something.”

“Really? You mean after all those weddings…? That’s terrible, Clint! Terrible!”

Poor Cap. Tony hid a laugh in the shoulder of his jacket.

 _Bruce, you should have been here_ , Tony thought, then pushed the thought out of his head. No unhappy notions allowed this evening. Tonight was for him, for Loki, and their joy. For the dear friends who'd chosen to spend the night celebrating with them.

Thor caught the boat as Loki tucked his oars inside, letting their little craft drift smoothly between the dozen others already tethered at the long boathouse dock.

His husband leaped out easily, apparently in no need of his own advice about keeping his center of gravity low and taking things slow.

The kids thronged their _Pabbi_ as Thor snatched Tony out of the back, spinning him around in a ginormous Viking bear-hug. “Dearest brother-by-law!” the thunder-god roared in his ear as his powerful arms compressed Tony’s ribs nearly to the breaking-point, Tony patting his back in an unsteady pattern of warning and affection.

“Dearest Thor,” Loki called out laughingly, “Release my new-made husband, please, while he may yet breathe. Come share an embrace with me, my forever-brother.”

Thor seemed to do so willingly, letting Tony loose before bounding over to Loki like a slightly over-excited golden retriever puppy--though the hug they shared afterwards was tender, gentle. Thor's head rested on his brother’s shoulder, while Loki stroked his long, loose hair and the two traded whispered words in their own language.

Hela’s hand slipped into Tony’s. “They’re telling each other that only the good from the past will be remembered, that every sadness from that time is forgiven and forgotten. That they share the sacred and unbreakable bond of brotherhood from this day forward, loving and protecting one another always.

Tony watched Loki slip a gold ring—the ring he always wore on his right hand, with the ancient-looking knotwork and the tiny runes marked inside—off his own finger, the two brotherslaughing softly as it barely balanced on the tip of Thor’s ring finger. A sparkle of green and gold and the band expanded, slipping easily down to where it belonged.

Thor removed a ring from his own right hand, an equally elaborate gold band, that hung loose on Loki’s slender finger until he performed the ring-growing spell in reverse. Solemnly, Thor kissed his brother’s forehead, then intoned another handful of SpaceViking words.

“Uncle Thor says you, we three, and our future brothers and sisters, are blood of his blood, and more than his blood, that he will love and protect us always, ahead of his own life. Now _Pabbi’s_ saying the same about Jane and Uncle Thor’s future children. The vow of brotherhood is a sacred, irrevocable thing.” Hela frowned slightly, her forehead creasing, as if she was trying to do complex math in her head. “It’s far from usual, even in Asgard.”

“Something we need to worry about?” Tony asked, not even sure why he asked it, except that his new daughter was looking inscrutable and vaguely concerned.

“What’s that, Dad? Worry? No, not worry…” Hela shook herself, suddenly, all the way from her coiled princess-hair down to her pearl-embroidered ballet slippers. “No, no, I shouldn’t think so...”

Fen, his patience tried beyond endurance, tugged hard on Tony’s hand, a slightly more insistent note in his usual happy hum. Visions of balloons and ice cream drifted through Tony’s head.

“Oh ho, someone wants a party!” Tony exclaimed, Fen giggling as Tony swept him up in his arms. “Is that someone named Fenrir?”

Fen giggled again, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder.

“I’m so proud of you, my honey,” Tony whispered in his ear. “You did such a good job for _Pabbi_ and me. If I had that job, I might have lost the rings, but you didn’t. Good thing I have such a smart little boy for my son.”

He could feel Fen’s pride in himself so easily, and also that he was hungry and a little sleepy, worn out by their big day.

“Jöri,” Tony called out. “Your _Pabbi’s_ being too serious over there with Uncle Thor. Will you grab him and pull him inside with me? Fen tells me there’s a party.”

“It’s beautiful, Dad,” Jöri answered, dutifully hauling a laughing Loki up the ramp to the veranda. “I helped!”

“It’s gotta be great then!” Tony called back to him, smiling down at his Childlike Empress as she smiled back at him with her pixie face and ancient eyes. She held onto his sleeve as he linked arms with Loki, and the two of them, younglings attached and Thor trailing, strode in through the wide French doors.

A thousand white balloons floated just under the vaulted ceiling of the one long room. Beeswax candles and hydrangeas (each cluster of blossoms as big as Tony’s head) in tall pots scented the air with their sweet, warm, pleasantly-dusty smells, mingled with the odors of delicious food cooking. The white linens, china, crystal and silver glittered in the candlelight.

Tony felt a little like a balloon himself, as if he could float right off his feet with joy, especially as he glanced over at Loki’s delighted face.

“It is… Tony, I know we planned, but it is so very…”

He set Fen down, taking his new husband into his arms before he could suffer a complete meltdown of joy.

“I wanted it to be everything you wanted it to be,” Tony murmured in his ear. “I only want to make you happy for the rest of our days, and I promise I’ll try, very hard, to make that happen, okay?”

“As will I,” Loki answered. “Ever will I try to please you, in every thing.”

It was only much, much later in the evening—or actually, early in the morning of the next day—after all the hugs and wine, dancing and good food, after they’d said goodnight to the kids and the wedding party, when Tony was in the shower and Loki passed out with exhaustion on the king-sized bed in the Royal Suite's master bedroom, that it hit him.

What he’d said about their future happiness, and what Loki had said, were two very different things.

"I will try to please you in every thing?" Oh, not good. So not good. Goddamn fucking Asgard and their technologically advanced yet crazy-backward ways!

He groaned, clunking his head against the shower wall, hating the fucking citizens of Asgard (Loki and Thor, of course, excluded), and their fucking strange ideas about absolutely everything, for about the thousandth time in the past two years. How they'd managed to take a guy as smart, sweet and essentially good as his husband and mess him up so thoroughly with their ideas of obedience and duty, honor and the Norns knew what else.

Gods, his poor Loki!

Of course his bat-eared husband, who Tony would have sworn was completely dead to the world in the other room, instantly appeared, butt-naked and shaky with concern.

“Did I dream?” he asked. “I believed I heard you strike your head upon the marble, and groan.”

His smooth brows drew together. “I was terribly worried, Tony.”

“No need, sweetie. See, I’m fine.” He pushed the shower head to spray away from the door. “Join me?”

Loki sniffed at his own arm doubtfully . “Do I smell unclean, Tony?”

“Babe, I have yet, in our time together, to detect you smelling unclean. This is more… um, togetherness. Relaxation?”

A sudden grin broke over Loki’s face. “Ah! Naughty touching! Forgive me.” He slipped into the enclosure, moving the shower head to spray on both of them, shaking back his long hair. “It is most delightful, Tony. Like unto a bath of rain. Can we obtain one such for our bathroom in the penthouse?”

“Don’t see why not.” Tony groaned again, not meaning to, unable to help it. He stood face to face with Loki now, his husband’s silky bare chest rubbing against his chest, one foot nudging aside his feet until Loki’s equally silky thigh was between his thighs, pressing lightly against his balls, as Loki’s hands, slick with shower gel, massaged his shoulders, his sides, his ass. Tony’s cock, already fully hard, rode against Loki’s belly.

Loki’s left hand moved slightly, parting Tony’s cheeks, one slick, slender finger sliding up inside him, a feather-touch teasing his prostate, Loki’s tongue sliding into his mouth in the exact second Tony gasped in surprise and arousal, moving in little lightning touches as his mind met with Tony’s mind and his hand slipped in between them, closing around Tony’s cock with that uniquely Loki grip that was fiery and fierce, but at the same time all silk and satin delicacy—fucking _ergi_ indeed!—that brought him to the very brink and held him there, and held him, and held him, right up to the moment he was at last allowed to fall apart completely…

…and put himself back together again inside the circle of Loki’s arms.

Tony became vaguely aware of Loki shutting off the water, lifting him out of the shower—his legs had apparently transformed to unset Jell-O—drying him tenderly. When he finally returned to some semblance of his regular self, he found himself on his back in the giant bed with the expensive sheets, a damp-haired Loki lying on his tummy beside him, watching him intently, with an expression of some alarm.

“By the _Nornir, hjarta minn_ ,” he said, voice trembling slightly. Loki pressed his hand over Tony’s heart. “It beats steady, I rejoice to feel. I feared that I had slain you in our marriage bed.”

“Our marriage shower, you mean?” Tony pushed his fingers back through his hair. It felt completely dry. “Christ, Lok, how long…?”

“Many hours. Morning has nearly arrived.”

“And you watched over me, baby, when you were so tired? You really must have been scared.”

“I forgot,” Loki said, sounding like a whipped puppy. “Oh, my belovéd, all the scars around your heart! And these.” Loki opened his other hand and a little stream of metal bits tingled onto Tony’s bare chest. Most were no bigger than coffee grounds, but others… were.

Considerably bigger, in fact.

“Fuck. The doctors missed all that?” The small pile of metal glittered in his blurry vision. “Any one of those could have…”

“Yes!” Loki scattered the pile with an angry flick of his hand. “I will allow nothing to harm you, Tony. I would heal you again and again, until the last blood drained from my body, but I would not lose you one instant before the time we are allowed. Not one smallest instant. And to think I…”

That finally snapped Tony fully awake.

Loki’s eyes were blood red—and not in a _Jötunn_ way. His hands shook and his skin was whiter than the lilies that had decorated the tables at their reception.

“Oh, baby,” Tony said softly. “I’m so sorry I scared you. I’m so sorry. I just don't have your... uh... stamina, I guess. It was fantastic, though. Really ”

“I was not frightened,” Loki answered, obviously lying his shapely ass off. “I was a little… concerned.”

“So ‘concerned’ you took on a little impromptu heart-healing? Cleaned up what the surgeons missed?”

Loki twisted away from him, roughly tugging out his nightstand drawer and rummaging for whatever lay inside. After a few seconds, his hand emerged with what appeared to be a large apple, very much like the red delicious apples dispensed by vending machine in Tony's old middle school, only spray-painted gold.

“It is not painted,” Loki explained. “They grow so, in my mother Frigga’s garden in Asgard, tended by Iðunn, wife of Bragi. First, however, they grew in Avalon. It is from there my sweet Myrddin secured this one, at my bequest, for there is nothing else I might give you, Tony, that you could not as easily purchase for yourself.”

“So... It’s a magical apple, I take it? It doesn’t just keep the doctor away?”

Loki’s eyes widened. He’d started to look stressed, even a little panicked.

“It’s just a saying we have, sweetie. ' _An apple a day keeps the doctor away_.' It just means you’ll stay healthy if you eat your fruits and veggies. Nothing more sinister than that.” Tony sniffed the apple. It smelled amazing, like this apple pie he’d had one time in a little diner somewhere in the vicinity of Seattle. Or was it Portland? Somewhere rainy, with a lot of trees, anyway.

He tried to remember all the magic stuff he knew about apples, but being an American, raised on Disney, his mind kept going back to Snow White sleeping in her glass coffin, surrounded by her dwarf-pals. And he did already have a Happy to keep him company.

He’d been more than amused to find Hap’s Icelandic girlfriend, who he’d totally pictured as another she-Thor, like Anita, but who actually resembled a blonde, blue-eyed Bjork. Aside from her smiling, elfin face, she was also a slender young woman about the size of a standard elf-on-a-shelf, which made her and Happy together look a bit like Timon and Pumbaa from _The Lion King_.

“The apple is not poisoned,” Loki told him, sounding weary. “It is only… what it is.”

And all of a sudden Tony remembered Loki talking about Avalon. "The Island of Apples," he’d called it. "The Island of the Ever-Young.”

He knew then what Loki had given him. What it meant. What a loving gift it was.

“My sweet baby,” he breathed. "My darling Loki.”

“It will not spoil,” Loki told him, taking Tony’s hand. “Even when cut. It may be scanned, studied. I know you will wish to examine its properties. I would have you think long on its meaning, Tony, for although the fruit is a gift of love, it is not without its dangers. It will heal, and it will make your life long--though, it will not, I assure you, make you live on a burden of years with your body broken beyond repair. It brings youth, not immortality.”

“But it does have healing properties." Tony studied his husband's tired face. "If it can reverse the effects of aging, maybe you, or Fen…”

Loki shook his head. “It will not make me what I was again. I tasted of the fruit in Avalon and was unchanged. Perhaps I am meant to be as I am now. Perhaps it restrains me from previous excesses.”

He wove his fingers in with Tony’s. “Pray, do not grieve for me, my husband, when I am well content. For the first time in all my life, I have everything I need.”

“Everything?” Tony asked.

“Everything,” Loki answered firmly, not the least bit of doubt in his voice.

His smile, then, was the most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen, or ever expected to see, and when he smiled back, apples and other considerations aside, he realized he’d never been more content either, more settled, happier in all his days.

"Life is good," he said to Loki.

"Yes," his husband answered, and meant it, "Life is good."

To be continued in _Bruce and Tony and Blessed Death_


End file.
